My father lost an arm in an accident more than 30 years ago. My mother has mobility issues resulting in a handicapped parking tag. My youngest brother is autistic.
I share this to qualify my perspective on the question I'm about to ask. I've been on the other side of struggles for access and icy stares. I sadly know how cruel people can be in dealing with those whom they ignorantly consider less than themselves.
But what about when a disability takes a superior claim to the comfort of others?
The Yo-Yo Ma concert last night was a to-the-rafters sell out. The majority of the tickets sold within days of when they went on sale. I personally had been anticipating the event since the first discussion about it last winter.
There's a magic in getting lost in the sound and passion of a truly superior artist. This promised to be an aural Disneyland.
In tuxedo and gown respectively, we settled into our balcony seats ready to be awed. Within the first bars of the William Tell Overture it first seemed something was very wrong with the percussion.
Every four seconds or so it sounded as if someone, someone in the balcony in fact, struck and dragged a brush across a snare drum. For the "orchestra only" overture and the Strauss piece that followed,it was an anonymous annoyance.
But the complainers at intermission had it all figured out. The metronomic sounds came each time another patron drew on her oxygen machine.
There were several oxygen machines present, one only two seats away from me, but none of the others made this noise.
I was initially annoyed with the people around for being so difficult about something that couldn't be helped.
For the start of Yo-Yo Ma's performance I tried to actively listen past the noise. But it dwarfed the gentle strains of the cello and held your attention in it's own relentless rhythm... which of course had no relationship to what you were trying to hear.
Instead of watching the stage transfixed, hundreds of people around us were staring, then glaring, at the woman with the tank. Ushers simply shrugged their shoulders. They certainly could not ask the woman to turn off her oxygen. When they told her at intermission that this was creating a problem for others there was no reponse.
Most of the people in the balcony were not the big dollar swells, but folks who treated themselves to the best seats they could afford for a very special night.
It was surely a special night for the person with the oxygen tank and her party too.
Did either group have the right to craft the experience to their own expectation to the exclusion of the other?
I don't know.
I do know I was dressed, ready and in my seat in plenty of time -- but missed the concert.



Copyright 2005 Judi Griggs