Don't try this at home!

I read a story this week about things that you should not try to move by yourself. Seriously, somebody actually got paid to write a “news” feature reminding us that it’s a bad idea to try to move a piano or a pool table alone.

That’s kind of like those ridiculous, “Don’t try this at home” warnings they put on TV when a professional driver on a closed course attempts to jump a Hummer through a flaming boxcar using an ice ramp…right?

I actually knew a guy once who was too cheap to pay an extra $35 to have a pool table delivered so he picked it up himself. It took two guys and a forklift to load it, which is significant because he never got close enough to the box to notice the warning that said, “400 Lbs. Do not attempt to lift manually.”

Once he got home the plan was to push the box out of the truck and rest it on its side in the garage until I…I mean he…could get some help. The box was partially up on its side already in the truck bed so I figured (yeah, OK, who am I kidding; it was me) that if I could just get it started gravity would do most of the work. I was sort of right; gravity worked.

Everything went as planned as I climbed into the bed of the truck with my back against the cab and began pushing the box out. It slid out nicely until it to fall flat as it came out instead of resting on its side. I jumped out with the intent of pulling the box out while pushing the side up; that’s when gravity showed up.

I can’t tell you exactly how it happened but somehow I ended up flat on my back, spread-eagle with a 400-pound box covering everything but my feet. I was a Rick sandwich with a concrete floor under me and a giant flat box on top of me; not my best moment.

My first thought was that I could simply push the box off and crawl out, my second thought was that 400 pounds is really heavy then finally it occurred to me that it was difficult to breath with a giant box on your chest.

Next, I attempted to scoot myself out from under the box but, since I could not lift it off of me, I was moving at a pace of about an inch every five minutes. In a calm, manly voice I called out for assistance.

I think it was about then that I realized that there was no one home and I didn’t expect anyone for hours. There is rarely any traffic driving by our house in a position to see me stuck there and, since I had backed into the garage, there was almost no chance they could see me even if someone did happen by.

I think it was about then that I stopped screaming for help and concentrated on trying to extract myself. I remember that it was very cold (the pool table was meant to be a Christmas present) and I was having a difficult time breathing but it was the 400 pounds of pressure on my bladder that gave me the ultimate motivation to make good my escape.

Properly motivated, I managed to scoot myself from under the box in short order and I’ll admit that the first thing I did after standing up was to look across the street to make sure that no one had seem me in under there.

Later I managed to scoot the box far enough into the garage so the door would close. That afternoon when my son got home and asked why my truck was not in the garage I had to show him the giant 400 pound box taking up half of the garage floor and, when he asked, I had to tell him the truth.

I said, “The moron who delivered this just pushed it out of his truck and left it here, can you believe that?” It wasn’t technically a lie; the moron who delivered it did push it out and leave it there, just like I said.

I’ve never really told that story before because it’s a little embarrassing but after reading that article I realize that it wasn’t really my fault. If I had been properly warned and instructed not to move a pool table alone, it never would have happened!