The Power of Words: How a Ben Folds Concert changed my life.

NOTE:  I have been up half the night typing this.  It is longer than I wanted and there are typos but I wanted to share my story.  I know it sounds dramatic but it is the truth

 

If you get to the end, thaanks!

 

Date:  Thursday, 18 July 2019

Time: 12:45A CDT

Location: Wichita, Ks

Weather: 85(0)! Clear  Heat warning until Saturday 7P

Listening to: “Liked” songs on youtube music…  Clams Casino “I’m God”

“The scariest thing you’ll ever do is just on the horizon”

—Ben Folds commentary from iTunes Originals

“If you’re paralyzed by the voice in your head it is the standing still that should be scaring you instead…  Do it anyway”

-Ben Folds Five “Do It Anyway”

Yesterday marked 15 years that I “Did it anyway” and overcame, at least for a moment, unafraid of the voice in my head.

To a lot of people what I did wouldn’t even show up on the radar of “IMPORTANT THINGS”.  It would be just another bus ride, just another show…  But for me?  It was one of the most scary fun crazy renewing things I had ever done…  Only things that outrank the event were the births of my daughter in 2006 and son in 2008, the day I got them returned to my care from the state in 2010 after the hell their father unleashed on us and all three times that I met my guide dogs for the first time, “dog day”

For anyone, and I’m guessing that would be a majority of those who now kindly take the time to read these words, all that, save for dog day, is a long and complex story that I will get ‘round o explaining soon…  spoiler alert, kids, 3rd guide dog and I are doing good, my ex?  Not so much as he is in federal prison to be followed by state prison for the rest of his life and he’s been on he inside for nine years now…

So, enough with this palaver…  Let’s get on with it…

What was this event that was so dang  significant?  Well? To nick the title of my OD entry from back then, that was lost in the hack attack of september 2004…  Looking back no big loss as it was so cringe and fangirl-is…  “Ben Folds concert in July and I’m Going!”

Background Early summer 2004 Littleton, Co.

When these events took place, I had been at the Colorado Center for the Blind in Littleton, Co for about four months…

I, along with about 15 other blind adults were taking part in the ITP (independence training program)

We all lived in an apartment complex in Littleton and attended “school” five days a week.  We learned how to function completely without vision and even though the training was grueling, it was one of he best things I ever did in my life and the skills I learned stand me to the good to this day.

We were as a group revving up for our next big adventure, and when I say adventure I mean, for me, the next big thing to stress out over and work my way into a low grade panic over because what we were getting ready for combined ALL the things I dislike.  Flying, crowds, huge city with the ever looming threat of getting lost and ultimately being murdered to death and ending up on the news with the chalk outline/crime scene tape/ cop car lights/ knife/ gun news graphic…

If that weren’t enough to cause stomach knotting ulcers, there was the not so small matter of “resident life”…  A very overlooked aspect of attending a blind rehab center…  All in all it is a good thing but man oh man people can bring the drams!  I am talking reality TV show level drams…

My roommate was just such a person…  She was nice and we hit it off straight away the first day I started classes, but as time went on it showed that she could be…  a bit…  overly…. uh… yeah…

She would snap and go off on people or about little things without warning…  Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde…

You never knew what you were going to get with her, it could be “hi, how are you?” or it could be “F—-k off!” sometimes both…  Hot and cold running craycray…

Some memorable examples were:

She, being at the program one month longer than I, was moved into my apartment around the time of this story…  I had been in the apartment longer and when my first roommate graduated the program and left out I took over the master bedroom of the apartment…  new RM was pissed and thought she was entitled to the room I sure did hear about it there for a while.

For a time this RM attended Jewish ceremonies each week and took up the whole no pork allowed thing.  Sunday through Thursday she was evangelical but on Friday and Saturday she was “jewish”.  That’s cool to learn about other  religions…  It is not cool to be a swinging dick or whatever the female version of it it is about it…

I bought some bacon…  So it wouldn’t go off, as one does, I put it in my place in the fridge.  The bacon was fortified in it’s sturdy package, so the chances of it cutting loose and going to socialize with the other food in the fridge was remote…  But!

You would of thought I had invited a whole pigpen of pork to infest everything in the fridge to judge for her reaction!   She tripped balls for a good day about it…

I rolled my eyes so hard I reattached the rent in my right eye for a moment but messed it back up again bashing my head into the wall over the amount of drama she had.  LOL

One friday around this time she left out to go do her thing…  I ordered a pizza piled with pork goodness and enjoyed the hell out of it!  I put the left overs in the fridge…  That next evening I woke up from a nap to a smell…  I couldn’t place it, but it was something I knew I knew…  It was cooking…  My RM had come home and was cooking something in the microwave…  a short time later she came into my room stuffing her slobbery gob with y pork infested pizza!

Uh…….ummmm?  What?

she said “Hi, thanks for the pizza, you don’t mind do you?”

Me… “Uh… Sure, no problem… You do know there is pork galore on there right??”

RM through a mouth full of pizza…  “Umhum it’s okay”

Me inside my head “OMFG really?”

Yeah you can’t make this stuff up.  LOL

Well anyway interesting residential life aside, we at the CCB were revving up for yet another fun chalenge…  We were to attend, those of us with some sight left, under blindfold, the week long convention of the National Federation of the Blind to be held in Atlanta, Ga.

under blindfold.

I told you it was like reality TV

I need to explain about this.  This blindfold thing was a main component of the training…  The NFB is all about the blind skills and if you have any vision at all hey make you go under blindfold so you don’t use your vision.  It sounds and looks weird and seems to be a bit much bu it works!  Doesn’t mean I liked it, but it is effective.

To get to Atlanta we all had to fly…  I have never been a fan of flying… being form Wichita, air capitol of the world, and the fact my whole family at on point or other up through my folks worked at Cessna not withstanding.  I didn’t like flying…  I liked it even less and was deathly afraid of it after the attacks of September 11th…

The prospect of being jammed into a convention center with thousands of other blind people, some of whom could have really been helped by the ITP because their cane skills were lacking to the point that getting jaded and tripped and smacked in the ankles by someone and their cane was not something that might happen, but a thing that would happen…

Then there was the whole city….   I had never been to Atlanta and really had no interest in going but you had to go.   So I did.

honestly, it was one of the best times in my life and I had fun but, the unknown is scary and at the time all that was unknown to me…

I remember how this all started…  It was a Sunday night and I for some reason looked up Ben Folds on his website.  I checked the tour…  I didn’t expect to see him go anyplace I was, he never is.  LOL but way at the end of the list it sad Kansas City, Mo City Market July 17 8PM

I ‘bout fell out my chair…  If I had that would of made the news because I don’t think earthquakes are common in Littleton, Co.

I also might of squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed! loudly like some teenage fangirl despite being in my mid 20s.

Not thinking or caring that Kansas is one hour ahead of Colorado, 11 there was midnight here, I called Larry.  I knew he’d be up but he still acted grumpy that I called him that late.

All in a rush I screeched down the phone…

“Ohmygodbenfoldsisgoingtobeatkansascitynextmonthandihavetogo!”

He didn’t understand a thing I said so, after calming down as much as I could, I said it again.

I explained that Mr. Ben Folds was going to play a show right there in KCMO (we lived on the KCK side of things in Olathe) and I really really really really really wanted to go…

After some back and forth he gave in and said that we would go…  This is where I may or may not have erupted in fangirl spazems.  All of a sudden all the fearful stress I had been living with for several weeks lifted..  I could do this.  I could get through all this scary stuff and Mr. Ben Folds would be at the end of it!

He doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground but to me he is someone I look up to.  God I’m 42 damn years old and too old for this fan club mindset…  Still  I found the strength to press on…

I worked things out with my instructors and the staff at the CCB for a week off later than the week off after convention that they gave other students.  I went in for class or to just help out between the week after convention and the week that I was to go to the show.

As the show date grew closer I started to freak.  How are you supposed to act at concert?  The only other show I had been to was The Beach Boys, my first music crush when I was ve or six…  To this day them and Mr. Ben Folds have been the only two concerts I’ve gone to…

Too much people!  what if they were rude or mean or tried to mug me?  Naah, this was easy to put out of my head.  Sure there are all holes, some of which like Ben Folds, I’m one… but the fact we had Ben Folds in common made it not as scary to deal with a group of people because I knew we had something in common….

What if I got to meet him?  I haven’t but would love to.

he might think I’m horrid or if he heard me sing one of his songs he might tell me me I suck and never to utter another one of his lyrics again.  or he might just think I’m a weird fat blind chick with no good points at all….  Most likely, if I passed him by or met him he’d not even think a moment about me.  Oh well…  Let’s do this…

Larry had got the tickets for us so that was taken care of…  A few days prior to the day I was set to go, I went to downtown Denver and bought my bus tickets.  I then spent time with my travel instructor to figure out how to get the city bus and train to the station to catch my bus to KC…  I had done this go on the bus home thing, but this was a whole new time of day and I would have to start out at half four or five in the morning by myself and my guide dog Fleming of corse…  I was afraid of this because I didn’t like going out in the dead of night and I always got mixed up finding the bus place downtown and was afraid I’d miss the buss…

I broiled out notecards that gave me directions for each step of my trip…  Getting from the apartment to the bus and the bus to the train was old hat but I still put the m down….  I kept  the cards in my pocket and as each step was done I transferred them to my other pocket…

I packed my bags, harkened up Fleming and we set out…  Apartment to bus, bus to train, trains to downtown all before sunrise…  I found the bus place and gate I needed with little help and the first big hurtle was overcome.

All I had to do for the next 14 hours was sit on the bus…  What could go wrong?  What indeed?

The bus took off with us on it and most of the trip went by without anything happening…  Fleming, my guide dog, was a pro.  As part of training we are shown what to do if you and your guide are going to be on the road of flying for a super long time and can’t have access to a spot to let the dog do his business.  It takes preplanning, restriction of intake…  You control the input, you can control the output… but me?  Different story.

In the late afternoon I needed to pee and we weren’t stopping off anyplace until we got to KC late in the evening. 

I couldn’t hold it…  I was going to have to…  do something so horrid, and unthinkable…  I was going to have to use the greyhound bus toilet thing!!!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

It didn’t help that I was reading “The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, the stephen king of real life super bugs that could make cap. tripps look like a cold…

The Hot Zone goes into graphic details about how Ebola effects those who come down with it.

Just as frightening as Stephen King’s descriptions of super flu in The Stand.

I am weird.  I like stuff like that but might not have been the best thing to have in my mind, what with facing the threat of the bus toilet…

I held it off as long as I could but things got real…  I did not want to pee the bus so…  I jammed Fleming’s leash down the seat crack, told him to stay, put my backpack on top of his leash and made my way down the isle to the toilet closet…

All the while the pictures of ebola patients crapping their intestines out in a fever hell…  As they lay waiting to die.

Sooner than I would of liked I reached the doorway to hell…  I thought get a good deep breath so you don’t have to inhale buss  toilet fumes…  I went in and did my business then as I flushed I forgot I was holding my breath and inhaled as a gust of fitted toilet breeze blasted up in my face.

Oh My God!!

I just inhaled toilet breeze!  greyhound toilet breeze!

ohfuckityfuckfuckfucki’mgoingto die!

I quietly gagged my way back to my seat and sat in stuned shock at how dumb I had been.   I’m going to be PT. Zero and give bus toilet ebola to everyone at the Ben Folds show!  What hsve I done!

I tried to expel all the air I had taken in out…  I guess I was thinking something along the lines of the five second rule, only for breathing…

But soon I resumed my book and before I knew it we arrived at KC…

With the specter of bus toilet ebola behind me I started to worry about going to the show.  crowds, crowds…  what do I do?  how do people know how to do at a show? OMG I’m going to do something wrong and bring shame on myself…

I actually thought about *NOT* going…but I did…

Saturday evening 17 July 2004 KCMO

Larry and I set out in the early evening to get to the show…  I did not take Fleming because I did not know if a concert was a proper place.  If it had been a place with seats built in I would of taken him but as this was at a place that was outside, standing room, I left the nerd at home and tok my white cane.

Larry started grumping at me because when we pulled up to this muddy field where we were meant to park, some guy came up, an official with a vest, bothering us for a five dollar parking fee.

Larry, who had lived in the KC area his whole life,   unlike myself growing up in Wichita, acted all mad I didn’t know there was a parking fee.

We parked.  We got out and made our way in…  There were loads of people there and we stood in a big long line for what felt like forever

We finally were let through and found a spot nearish the front of the stage.  I should of have asked Larry to score me a concert Tee but…  I wasn’t about to leave my spot and the thought of him going and maybe not coming back because of crowds scared me.  Besides that, surely there would be enough concert tees left.

We stood there for a hella long time.  They played some music  over the sound system and then the opening act cam out.  It wasn’t the well known guy that was on most of the tour, it was gavin somebody or other.  He has a lot of well known songs now but I wasn’t impressed.  He seemed like a dick, one of those popular jock guys like in high school and I didn’t like him or his music.  Neither did most everyone else and we all grouped collectively about it.  “You suck!” and “We want Ben Folds!” and “booooooooo play you own music!” was shouted out…

I am ashamed of myself.  I did preforming arts, vocal music and guitar from the start of middle school through my senior year of high school and I knew full well what it took to do a show infant of people and how it could be hard and that we were rude was bad.  But I wanted Ben Folds!

Things rambled on for a time and then, without any fanfare or aything, he comes out…  I didn’t know this until the opening notes of Uncle Walter started up.

How I was meant to act went out the window, I started singing along with Mr. Ben Folds.  I sang every damned song up in that concert except for “Fair” and that was only because these two people stood next to me started scrapping as that song came up.

This girl was stood next to me and she kept leaning on this guy,  I thought she knew him but she did’t…  The girl had been drinking…  a lot… and the guy didn’t like her leaning up on him and he told  her to get off and then they started shoving.

There I am stood with my white cane and these people are acting like they are th e only people in the place and like they were trying to be on very springer or something.

The girl mashed my left foot in the brall and got dirt on my new sandals I bought just for the show!

Where was Larry?  He was there, stood like a lump on a log looking like this was waterboarding, having to listen to Ben Folds in person.  He didn’t try to step in between me and these fighting people so I wouldn’t end up maybe getting hit or knocked over or something…  No..  My boyfriend could be bothered to help…  But this other guy stood near us, big talll guy saw me, my cane and that I was blind.  He asked me if I were okay and I said yeah, and he put himself between me and the fighting people and told them to cut the crap…  Ben Folds fans can be awesome!

The funny thing was, the drunk girl started grumping about how she drove 14 hours to get here… but she smelled like a beer brewing factory and pot and my thought was, if you were going to come all that way why would you get so blotto you’d not have a memory of the show?  I like beer and I like pot but I like Mr. Ben Folds beter and wanted to remember everything.  But to each his or her own…

The rest of the show went on without anymore drama…  When Army came on Mr. Ben Folds had the audience play along…  I had seen this on the Ben Folds Live DVD my folks bought me for my birthday the year prior so I knew what to expect…  Everyone was split into two groups and one group sang along one thing and the other group another thing.  so you knew what group to be in they flashed the lights and what ever light you where close to that was your group.  I could see enough to follow the lights and OMG it was so fun to be in a huge crowd of people all of us, save for Larry, just singing along and having a blast.  It was fun and I loved how Mr. Ben Folds had us all join in.  He really did a good show and I was impressed.  He sounds just as good in person as he does on DVD or CD or apple music and I got the feeling he was a very down to earth nice good hearted guy even though I didn’t get to meet him.  He just put off this vibe of being down to earth and not stuck up at all.  Like he was the kind of person you could talk to or joke with or have a beer with and pal around…

We left out while Guster ended the show because Larry didn’t want to fight the traffic.

We went to the shirt stand… 

They were sold out of Ben Folds teeshirts!!!!!!!!   What in the hell dude!  what kind of doofus runs out of shirts for the main guy that was playing!  They had plenty of shirts for the opening act.  Oh I was mad!  I know now space is limited and you can only lug so much crap from place to place but dam it I wanted a shirt with Ben Folds…

A few weeks later Larry ordered to me a Ben Folds shirt that had the cover of rockin’ the suburbs on it.

I wore that shirt every time I had to do something that frightened me, like a good luck talisman until it was more holes than shirt.

When I returned back to Littleton, several days later I came back to find that RM had taken a dump in my privet bathroom rather than hers and didn’t flush.  She also helped herself to my computer and snooped around in some very personal pix/textx between Larry and I.  *blush*

One last thing before I end…

As part of the grad requirements from the ITP there were a lot of test type things you had to do for each class

In my travel class one  of the things was a reverse scavenger hunt where I had a long list of things to go to in the city proper.  I could not use Fleming and had to go under sleep shade, blind fold and depend on my white cane.

I did the same note card trick I had done to find the bus place and the day, while a challenge went off without trouble save for a few places.

I was in downtown Denver and on the 16th st mall…  I had missed the point I needed to be to catch the right train, but I could get on the shuffle on the mall and get back to the place I needed, only thing lost was time…  No big deal.

I got on the shuffle and found a place to stand out of the way.I took the time to go over my notes.  wasn’t bothering anyone but the driver was a condescending jerk and made some comments about me…  He was not a nice person to be around.  made him mad because I rode his shuffle all the way round because I needed to get to the stop prior to the one had had got off..

Sooner or later I got where I needed to be and had lunch and had to go back to the mall to take the shuffle to get someplace else later on down the day.

I ended up getting the same ass hole I felt with earlier!  More b.s. attitude from this guy, so much so that he made a point of telling everyone to get off his shuffle at the end even though you could ride the thing round and round all day if you liked given you didn’t bother people

He said something like, he said the stop and said everyone had to get off and then he called me out of the crowd, by saying this includes you blind lady…

TF?

I wanted a hole to open up under me I as so ashamed.  and then it got worse.

I got off and went to a seat to wait for the train.  big swinging dick with no balls got off and started chatting up one of the train drivers that I guess was on break.

D w/o balls told the driver that that crazy lady overthrew, meaning me, had been on his people mover several times an how I must be a freak and other rede AF stuff.

that was it.  the very last straw.  I was already emotionally fragile from the day and to be called a crazy freak pushed me over the edge.

This is back when I had emotions that functioned normally…  Now a days I wouldn’t bother showing anyone they upset m and would likely of told the dick to go procreate with himself or to take a airborne reproductive act at a swiftly rotating pastry…

But back then my default setting was burst into sobs.

I didn’t want to be there.  I didn’t want to be pointed out of the crowd because I wasn’t doing anything to anyone

A nice lady came over to see if I were okay and I explained to her what happened…  She let me use her cell phone to call the school to talk with my travel instructor.  He said to go home and we would try again the next day and to take care of myself and to not be upset as I had done nothing wrong.

I got the train and then got the bus to go home.  The e driver saw I was upset and asked what had happened…  I told her and she said that the other drier did me dirty and acted badly and that I should ring RTD and say what he did.

Then.  on my CD player “cooler than you” came on and there is a part in the song that says make me feel tiny if it makes you feel tall, there’s always someone cooler than you, yeah you’re the shit but you won’t be for long there’s always someone cooler than you.

I thought dude dam skippy!  stupid sad people mover driver, must suck to be him… who does he think he is anyone to talk to anyone like that?   F that guy.  f him with dubya’s fossilized dick…  Thinks he’s the shit and all that.  Right?

The next morning I went in and spoke with my instructor and we called RTD.  Turns out the lady I spoke with had a blind husband and she was right mad an RTD driver had been so rude.

he ended up being removed off his people mover andI never had to deal with him anymore even though I went to the 16th st. mall several times after that.

Prior to going to the Ben Folds show I am not sure I’d of had the guts, breaking down into tears not withstanding to pick up and press on…

c