Are Concerts Worth it?

Concerts are always a difficult experience for anyone with a disability.  It is never a great idea to be in a room hundreds of people all crunched together.  Someone always gets hurt every time a gathering such as this takes place.  The bands that I saw firsthand were not that memorable.

The first band I ever saw live was the pop punk artist Green Day.  The band’s fourth album Insomniac had just come out a few weeks prior to this show.  I remember tickets being sold for fifteen dollars each.  I was only nine years old when this was happening, so my chances of actually seeing Green Day were rather slim.  This concert also took place on the first Monday in November of 1995.  I thought that there is no way my parents would let my brother and I go to a concert at all let alone on a school night.  The worst thing that could happen was that both parents tell me that I could not go. 

Things do not turn out how I am imagined in my head.  Both of my parents actually said that I could go to the Green Day concert.  I am sure that they were aware that this would be a one-time thing.  My brother and I even got to stay home from the school the next day.  Our father would be the one to take us to the show.  You could not be that with a stick. 

The concert was held at the Baltimore Arena.  I came to the concert in a wheelchair.  The security checked my body up and down for harmful substances; however they never bothered to check the book bag that I kept on the back of the chair.     

All three of us sat in seats that were pretty far from the band.  The members were a bit hard to make out, but the show was a blast.  Green Day played all of their hit songs at the time.  The set included tracks such as Basket Case, Geek Stink Breath, Welcome to Paradise, Longview, and She.  The only incident I remember occurring was a girl in the mosh pit being dropped on her head.  She must have been crowd surfing. 

I did not go to another concert again until the January of 2001.  This concert was just full of local punk bands.  The show took place in Towson.  The temperature outside was around twenty degrees on the night the outing.  My brother found out about this concert through some friends.  We showed up quite early for the show and had to wait about an hour before security let everyone inside the bar.  They stamped the hands of everyone who was too young to drink. 

The show began, and it was loud as can be.  There was no assigned seating like at the previous concert.  The place was just a huge mosh pit.  I was in a wheelchair during the duration of the gig.  I almost got knocked over quite a few times.  I became more nervous about being tipped over after each bump from another individual.  The show finally ended, and everyone went home. 

I also went to another concert up by the Salvation Army in Westminster during March of 2001.  The setup was very similar to the last show.  There were no actual seats whatsoever.  The entire place was once again one big mosh pit.  People came in contact with my chair a lot more frequently this time around.  One person almost knocked the chair over completely.  Most of the music was pretty good.  None of the bands stood out in any way.  I eventually went into the back room to sit in a chair away from everyone else.  I was not able to see any of the bands from this room, but I did not care anymore.  I just wanted to be safe. 

After going to three concerts during the first fifteen years of my life, I realized that live shows just are not for me.  I had the opportunity to go to a Pennywise show about a month ago.  I turned this down because I was afraid of getting hurt.  I do not avoid many things due to fear, but concerts just do not sit well with me at all.  A person needs to be a bit more careful when he or she has a disability.  Live shows are places where the ignorance level is rather high, so it is best for someone like me to steer clear of these events altogether.