It proved to be a…let’s see, how can I put this? It proved to be an eventful evening.
My mobility is extremely limited, so it is really hard for
me to get ready to go out. Taking a
shower and getting dressed exhausts me.
And since I rarely do go out, I was very anxious, nervous about getting
around ok and worried about the level of pain I am struggling with. Waiting for the car to pick us up, I was a
neurotic mess. My sister was talking me
down, standing in the kitchen looking out the window when she says “Did you
order a white stretch limo?” And I start
laughing because I think she is making a joke and she says “No, really, that’s
what’s out there.”
So I pop up like a demented jack-in-the-box and to my horror
I see that is exactly what is out there – a vehicle that we could never fit my
power wheelchair into no matter how hard we tried. I lurch out to the driveway, freaking
out. “What happened to the car I
reserved?!?” I cried. The driver was like “What car?” I told him we had to transport a power
wheelchair and he said, oh no one told him that, but don’t worry, we’ll fit it
in.
Then he saw it.
Acknowledging there was no way to fit the wheelchair, he started
calling his office. After forty five
minutes of hemming and hawing, it was finally determined that I would have to
go with my manual wheelchair, which meant I would be uncomfortable all night
and my sister would have to push me everywhere.
By that time I had calmed down [somewhat] and was just grateful I was
going to the concert.
On our way:
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| Cathy, innocently thinking the worst was behind us. |
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| The rest of the limo. We sat on the back seat giggling like mad. |
Once on the road, he drove like a maniac. We were plastered onto the back seat by the
speed of the car. Cathy kept murmuring “We’re
gonna die. I know it, we’re gonna die.” And she’s the calm one. I was actually relieved at first when we hit
traffic, because it meant he had to slow down.
Or so I thought. He would speed
up to the car in front of us and then slam on the brakes, speed and slam, speed
and slam, lurching the car repeatedly until I was so car sick I thought I was going
to throw up.
At the stadium, which he had never been to before, he had no
idea where he was going or where he was allowed to drop us off. He finally unloaded us about a half a mile
from the entrance we had to use and my sister had to push me all that distance,
over uneven asphalt with few curb cuts.
Then I realized in the rush to get out of the car, as he had been
blocking traffic, I had left my camera behind.
I was TICKED.
But we were here!! We
let all the car stuff go and were determined to have a blast! We had floor tickets for Bruce! It didn’t get better than that. We gave in our tickets, went through security
and got to the wheelchair section of the General Admission floor. A staffer snapped “Where are your
wristbands?!?” Wristbands? What wristbands? “You need to get your wristbands at the white
tent outside.” Cathy goes, “I am not
pushing my sister all the way back outside and then back again!” He eyeballs me and replies, “Ok, you can
leave her here, just take both tickets, they’ll give you her wristband.” So Cathy goes and spends 15 minutes looking
for the white tent. But it actually was
YELLOW. He had told her the wrong
color. Then they wouldn’t give her two wristbands
even though she explained the circumstances and she had two tickets. Finally she got a hold of a manager who gave
her two wristbands and initialed the tickets.
Inside, they stopped her and examined the initialed tickets as if they
were classified government documents related to national security. They would not let us sit until they verified
the initials were valid!! Finally we got
situated on the platform, with strict instructions as to how we were to stay
positioned. We were exhausted, and the
concert hadn’t even started yet!!
But what a concert it was!!
Phenomenal! Bruce, 63
years old on September 23, played almost four straight hours. He rocked, he mugged, he goofed around, but he
was somber too. He played a few more
ballads than usual and gave some introspective intros. He talked about the family ritual of going to
Jersey Freeze for ice cream after dinner in the summer. We did that too. I often wonder if we were ever there at the
same time on a hot summer night as children.
He told of his memories of his late father taking them to the cemetery to
put flowers on his aunt’s graves. My
husband is buried in that same cemetery, not too far from Mr. Springsteen. There are so many connections. Bruce talked about how the older we get, the
more ghosts walk with us. As children we
are afraid of ghost stories. As we age,
it is a comfort to have the company of the spirits of those we love. That truly resonated when they showed a slide
show of Clarence during Tenth Avenue Freeze Out. At the line “…and the Big Man joined the band…”
everything stopped and all those memories of Clarence flashed across the
screen. In some pictures they were so
young! It was really moving. Then they started up again, clearly missing
him but happy to have had him in the band.
Clarence’s nephew Jake is playing sax with the E Street Band now and he
is fantastic. And just so cute.
Bruce plucked a little girl from the audience to join him on
Waiting on a Sunny Day. She was absolutely
adorable, he was hilarious, being a big ham, and it turns out she was the
daughter of a friend of my sister’s. Here
is the video her dad took:
My sister went to get a drink and on the way back spoke to
one of the staff about being able to get our car closer to the stadium to pick us
up. At first they said no, but she
pushed the issue. While the concert was
going full blast, one of the staff came and screamed in my ear that they would
get a cart to drive us to the car. So I
screamed back in her ear that was impossible, there was no way I could get in
and out of a cart. She got her team
leader and he came over to me and screamed the same thing. I was getting really upset. I screamed back at him that I had paid a lot
of money for these tickets and I wanted to enjoy the concert. I added there was no way I could do the cart
thing and I would discuss it after the concert was over. I was close to tears and I was shaking with
frustration and embarrassment. He threw
up his hands in an exaggerated gesture as if to say “This woman is impossible!”
and that truly distressed me. Bruce was
about to start an encore, but this dispute had really taken a lot of the fun
out of it for me. Ironically, the band
played something like six songs for an encore, so it was almost another hour
before the concert was over.
By that time the team leader guy was gone and the staff
member who oversaw the handicapped area of the General Admission section said
to us, I will take you to your car and then said something else that made it
sound as though they were going to let the car pull up. But that was not the case. She pushed me as far as the stadium border
and then Cathy had to push me the rest of the way, a total of a half a mile
again. I gave the girl my card and I advised
her that I was going to pursue this, as it appeared they were not complying
with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Not to mention, with very few exceptions, their customer service was
appalling.
It took a while to coordinate with the driver of our car in the parking lot,
but finally we were on our way home.
There had been elements of the absurd and the stressful and the stadium fascists staff
worked hard to make things as difficult as humanly possible. But nothing could take away the pleasure I got
from the great company of my beloved sister and an amazing concert by Bruce and
the E Street Band.
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| 9/19/12 Saed Hindash/The Star Ledger |
Next: The Limo Company and the Stadium Have Some Splainin’ to
Do
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