Big F'ing Mistake

You ever have that little voice inside your head tell you to do something opposite of what you are about to do? I did on Sunday (2/21/2010). Sadly, I ignored it. In doing so, had to face one of the worst experiences ever in my life. This is the story.

4:45 PM - Getting ready to leave the house to meet some friends at Union Station before we attend WWE's Elimination Chamber pay-per-view event live at Scottrade Center. I had been to a number of WWE live events in my life before, but not a pay-per-view events in a number of years. I had been semi-excited about going, but I was starting to have some regrets. As I climbed into my car, that little voice decided to give a suggestion..."don't go." I quickly debated in my head what excuse would be acceptable to give 30 minutes before the meeting time. I couldn't come up with anything that wouldn't either seem lame or make me look like an asshole. With that, I started the car and left.

5:15 - Arrived at Union Station and found the people I was meeting. After a bit of debate, it was decided to walk around Union Station to kill some time.

Okay, to give a bit of background, Union Station is something of a mall in downtown STL. Back in the day when I was a kid, Union Station was a neat place to go with a bunch of cool shops you couldn't find anywhere else. Then about ten years ago it became more of a tourist mall, with mostly STL themed merchandise. That, of course, was ten years ago.

5:25 - Okay, no fucking mall should take ten minutes to walk, let alone, slow (killing time) walk. About 70% of the storefronts were unoccupied, while the other 30% was filled with stores no one that lived in STL would be even remotely interested in. What a depressing walk of fond childhood memories completely fucking shattered thanks to a piss poor economy. We decided standing outside in the rain would be far less pathetic.

5:40 - Standing outside under a small amount of cover outside Scottrade. Line is well over 500 people long with one hour before event time. It is cold and raining. This sucks.

5:50 - Finally get inside, now waiting in a way too long of line to look at WWE crap I have zero interest in buying. The only good thing from the night happened here when a guy recognized me from the Video Games Show. It was cool for the five minutes I talked to the guy, but that was the end of the fun.

6:20 - After having to completely surrendering all principles and paying $7 for a 20 oz bottle of water, we get to our seats. There are three of us. On the one end, was a screaming child, total nightmare I wanted no part of. On the other end, a dude that had to weigh close to 500 pounds who was taking up not only his seat, but half of each seat next to him. Guess who got to sit next to him. Since we opted for tenth row floor seats, there were no armrests or dividers between seats. I try to sit down and realize that I am going to be squeezed all night long.

Now, before anyone asks, I opted to try standing back up against a wall about fifteen rows back. I would have rather stood the whole time for the sake of my sanity. I stood there for like 30 seconds when an usher told me to take my seat. I explained my situation and that fact that I have knee problems that made it too painful to sit because the dude sitting there was taking up too much room. The usher told me that it didn't matter, I could not stand there. So I demanded to speak to someone else. I got a guest services manager, explained the situation, and was told that my options were sit in the seat, or stand in the concession area, where you can't see anything.

Rather than go on with the time breakdown, I will just break this up into two parts that ruined the rest of the night.

First, the usher in our seating area decided he wasn't going to do his job, which made things both annoying and painful. When you sit on the floor level, there is no rise in the seats, which meant if someone is standing in front of you, you won't see shit unless you stand as well. For those of you who have not attended a WWE event, people generally stand when a wrestler comes out, when a big move happens, and when the match ends. It is the job of the usher to tell people to sit down by waving their hands in a downward fashion. Every other section on the floor the ushers were doing their jobs. People stood up and sat down at appropriate times. Our guy did not. So our section stood through almost the whole thing.

To explain a bit more about me, contrary to popular belief, I am not a confrontational person. I especially don't want to get into any fights with the drunk rednecks that make up about 95% of the WWE live event audience. With that said, every time everyone stood up during inappropriate times (thanks a bunch for not doing your job you lazy fuck of an usher) and the people behind me were screaming "sit down," I sat down, which meant I couldn't see shit. As a result, I spent the better part of the night looking straight up to look at the tv in the scoreboard to see what the fuck was going on. I might as well of just stayed home and watch it on tv (or better yet, just look at the results online and do something more constructive with my time). Because of the looking up all night, I had the worse neck cramp all night and neck pains all the next day.

Second, when going to our cars at the end of the night, and a crossing guard (a cop no less) instructing everyone to run across a street in the rain to not block traffic, I rolled my ankle, which just made things even better. Now I have hardcore neck and leg pain, thanks a fucking bunch.

Anyway, that night totally sucked. When I got home I apologized to my Dad for the fact that I made him drag me to wrestling shows when I was a kid. He was absolutely thrilled to hear that.

To sum up...NEVER AGAIN!!!