I am stubborn. But I like to call it self-sufficiency. Having recently moved the foosball table to the hall closet without an assist, I was feeling pretty invincible … until my little run in with the monster TV. I tried to manhandle it by my own self.

You see, finally I have succumbed to the need for a flat screen in the man cave portion of the second floor overlooking the balcony, which leads me to the pressing philosophical questions of the twenty-teens. What do you do with the old set? It works great, and with a now-required digital antenna the picture is about as good as the new ones. But, we all know the issue is girth. My old 40-inch Toshiba is one big, bad mamma-jamma of plastic that will last thousands of years.

But, hey, I can handle it. I got it up there didn’t I? Trouble is, that set is about 10 years older now … and yes this old boy has seen a few more reruns too, since the time I snatched it up and toted it ascending the stairs. I looked at the Toshiba beast on top of a five-foot armoire … and I started to have my doubts.

Doubts are the devil. I probably would have been fine, if I hadn’t thought it to death.

I devised all types of plans and contingencies. At one point I was convinced I would roll the butcher block table into the room from the kitchen and ease the TV over the edge and on to that lower plane. Then I thought, maybe I can still hoist this beast. For plan B, I thought I could just lift it and place it on the end of the bed. So, I put a large piece of cardboard on the bed to shield the bedding. Hmmm … how to pull this off? It was up in the air, so to speak.

So as I continued to mull it over, I gave the old set a once over with a dust rag. Ha … I was dressed in black — for depressed Monday apparently as all the Internet blogs reported — and I didn’t want to look like a human lint filter. I wiped the top, sides, front and was edging the TV to the front edge of the armoire to clean its backside when all hell broke loose. Somehow I was paying more attention to getting streaks off the screen than the balancing act.

Crap! … I saw the thing heave forward for a second, then it rolled … kind of like a diver when they grab their ankles on the way for the water. Ha! First instinct was to try to catch the thing. A friend’s joke about finding me trapped under the TV, from earlier in the day played in my head. What could I do? What could I do?

I had just enough time to act — in the split second when the TV’s life flashed in my mind — to push. Rather than bear the brunt of the weight, inertia, gravity and any other forces at work on this body now in motion, I just tried to divert it … to alter its course, but not stop it. (Aren’t old school TV tubes subject to exploding too? … I sort of saw that a little bit in my mind …)

Successfully, I shoved the falling object to the edge of the bed. Ha … I think it was like shedding off a block in football … or maybe like using the opponent’s weight and approach against him in Judo … or something heroic like that. Funny. Did you know that a TV will bounce on a bed just like a happy kid at a slumber party? My old chunky friend Toshiba hit the bed, kind of rolled in the air, went back up and was again headed for the floor.

I almost dived to stop it and got one hand on it, playing the bounce. Or maybe the bounce played me. Next, the set hit the hard wood floor. You might think there endeth the tale of Toshiba. But no. Hardwoods have a little spring to them I suppose because the thing bounced up a little … just enough to climb on a low table near the edge of the bed. Guess what I had stored temporarily on this low table.

YES! The new 50-inch flat screen was in harm’s way. I almost cried. It was like a slow-motion disaster film. My mega-outdated TV — now on its second bounce — was about to have it’s way with the sleek, sexy, new skinny screen.

Funny thing about fat Toshibas, they bounce high, but not very far forward. The old set barely knicked the edge of the low table where the new TV was planted. I sighed huge … then gasped. Not so fast! My new TV wasn’t out of the woods yet. The old one hit the table, and yes … about a milli-second later I saw the new one tilt backwards and the pedestal slide forward. The new flat screen went down like a quarterback approaching the first down marker.

I am not making this up. All these thoughts and emotions were rushing through my mind. This was so pathetic … and yet had to look totally hilarious in the most slapstick sense of the word. I felt like throwing up just a little in the back of my mouth, and giggling a bit. IF only I had a video of this fiasco. I am sure it would’ve rivaled one of those America’s Funniest Home Videos where the guy bursts the family’s above-ground pool and everyone and everything in the vicinity is hit by a domino-effect tsunami.

You won’t believe this. The huge dinosaur TV has a slight crack in the plastic — or at least that is all I detected since I can’t lift it very well … but I plugged it in and it works fine. What is it they say, “Scars are like tattoos with better stories”? I digress …

Is there a person on the planet, besides me, who still has or possibly wants more fat-screen technology in their lives? If so … want to rescue a slightly abused, well-behaved Toshiba? It can roll over. I would love to give it to a good home. But, I insist that at least two people corral the thing for the trip home.

As for the new flat screen … I guess it slid in safely … It works, and it looks great perched up on top of the armoire, although perhaps not safely perched.  I had to ice my hand for a bit … but I guess it’s okay … just took a plastic corner to the palm.  It and the bruised pride have recovered enough to allow me to “blog about nothing.”

Know what I sayin?