Bad Stadium

My mom had knee surgery 2 weeks ago.  Even so, she did not want to miss the match up between the MN Vikings and the Green Bay Packers.  My mom and my sister have had MN season tickets for years, so they have great seats near the front at the end zone.  But there is only one handicap area near the top, and near outside doors that for some inexplicable reason were left open yesterday.  You can use the handicap seats for a game at a time for a temporary disability, so they did, not knowing what they were really like.

The MN Vikings website said that they were ADA compliant.  I wonder if any of the people who designed this stadium or supposedly ensured that it was ADA compliant had ever had to use these handicap seats.  Not only wads there no elevator, but apparently there were no working handicap doors.  At least in the Metrodome, one could use an elevator if they needed to as to avoid the long flight of stairs.  Now there is none.  I guess they figure that if you want close seats, that is the price you have to pay, to climb all those stairs.  I remember the stairs at the Metrodome.  By the time I got to the top, I was panting.  And the security kept trying to get me to move out of the way.  I just glared at them.  They could arrest me for trying to live.  I wondered about this new stadium, why there is no elevator.  Don't they have to have a freight elevator to transport thing up and down?  Herberger's even let me use their freight elevator when their elevator was down and I am afraid to use escalators.

I suppose some might complain, well, at least they have seats.  So what?  So elderly and disabled people have to accept less than what they want?  Do the powers that be figure that oh well, they already have a disability, what difference does it make if they are cold?

It's like when I was a student about 12 years ago at the U of MN.  They had handicap access doors, but they were where people were allowed to smoke.  And sometimes the elevators didn't work.  I suppose the U figured oh well, they already have a disability, so what if they also get lung cancer from second hand smoke?  Right after I finished my program there, did they finally work on those problems.  

I guess I get disgusted when the elderly and disabled are ignored.   We are in such a PC culture nowadays that every one is demanding their rights.  What about our rights?  We don't have a celebrity voice.  We are not cool, and are rather representative of something that most people don't want to think about, having to get old, or having a disability.  I don't say this for myself, as I am relatively able bodied.  But I see what is happening around me, and what is happening to my parents as they get older, and it makes me sad.