Crash

One benefit of advancing technologies is a decrease in weight of many items.  We had an old catho-ray tube television in the basement, and many years ago the on-off switch stopped working, but we got by with the remote.  Well, the remote stopped working and we decided that it was simply best to part with the television.  My wife told me that this should be a blog post in what happened next, and since I always, or most always, listen to her here is the blog post.  From the title, one can probably guess what happened.

Online photo of old Catho-ray Tube Television

The old 27" tube television was very heavy.  I was able to haul it up from the basement without incident, but getting it down the front outside steps, I pulled some ligaments and muscles on my left side of my stomach area down into my leg.    I could feel the pull, or stretch as it occurred.  But, that was not the worst.  I sat the monster down on the pavement so my wife could help me load it into the car.  Our new vehicle has a much higher load in height, but here, I realized, the TV was too large and heavy for me to lift in by myself.   We set the TV in the back and we got it set into the car to take it to a recycling location.  Backing out of the garage the television tipped over and rammed the tailgate of the vehicle.  So, there I am on the steep grade in the driveway wondering if it damaged the back window or the tail gate.  I decided I needed to open the tailgate, and try to catch the TV at the right moment to straighten it back up.  Meanwhile I hear my wife making some comment as she sat in the passenger seat.  I had no luck trying to straighten the big weight back up, and crash it falls face first on the drive breaking the massive glass tube.  I never would have guessed that the glass was thick as it was, but it makes sense in that most of the weight is in the glass.  Her comment was to get the car on a level surface.

32" LED Insignia Television

After cleaning up the mess of glass in the driveway, we delivered the television to a recycling location and picked up a new one for the basement, and the first thing one notices is how light the new TV is, although it has a larger screen size.  A bag of finch bird seed we picked up as we ran errands weighs more than twice as much as the new TV, but much less than the old tube TV.  The new TV weighs 9 pounds. Information online indicated that an old 27" tube TV likely weighs over 75 pounds, and perhaps as much as 90 or 100.  Quite a weight difference.   

My wife asked, what lesson was learned today?  She answered for herself, saying to ask for help, with a loving comment such as "Oh no, you have to be the big tough guy thinking you can do this all by yourself."  My thought was, in lessons learned, that I probably should have laid down to begin with.  My second thought was, I should have done this when she was not around, kinda of like when I get on the roof to clean out the gutters.

Images from Google Images