I recently held a piano concerto in my living room. I called it, “Hemotoma in not minor.” Yes, the rumors are true: I foolishly dropped the biggest part of a piano in my living room, leading me to have a really sore leg. It felt much worse than sore for the first little bit, though. For the first 30 seconds or so after it happened, it was all I could do to sing, “Jesus Loves Me” and hop around on one foot. I’ve learned that cursing is not beneficial and really only makes me feel worse, so I generally don’t do it. The next 30 minutes were spent under an ice pack wondering whether or not my leg was broken. After I got up and walked around a bit, I realized that wasn’t the case. If I could walk on it, it wasn’t broken. But it really, really hurt.

I guess I should explain how it all came to pass. It all started when one of my friends bought a new house, which came complete with a donated piano. He didn’t want it, so he gave it to me because I asked for it. Even so, I haven’t had the opportunity to thank him properly. Perhaps I will find something that I can donate to him in the future. All joking aside, it was a gift given in good faith. After all, he didn’t know I would drop it on myself.

After we put it on my little aluminum dolly, we rolled it out of the house and lifted one end, finally placing it up on the pickup bed and hoisting the other end. Another friend was there to help, giving us three lifters against one piano. We won, but it put up a good fight. However, in hindsight, putting it on the truck was the easy part.

After we got to the house, it was unloaded the same way, first one end to the ground, then the other. After removing my front door and screen door, the piano finally made its way inside, but not without hernia fears arising in my mind as I lifted the lead end.

We moved it against the wall and there it stood, waiting to be looked over and tuned by a local fellow. After he looked at it, he surmised that it wasn’t fit to tune and that it should be thrown away. It was partially eaten by moths and pretty well beyond any useable standard for tuning.

The piano, which was made in 1924, was once a player piano that had most of the working parts removed. That having been said, he told me that it wasn’t really a good idea to have it in the house, what with the moth damage and all.

Having just moved the behemoth once, I was not inclined to try it again. So, being the type fellow I am, I decided to salvage the wood and other parts. The keys were made of ivory, so I knew they needed to be saved. I still don’t quite know what I might do with them, but I saved them nonetheless.

I took off the front and top without much problem, with the exception of the mummified remains of an entire family of musical mice that nearly cost me my lunch. The sides were glued on with such strong stuff that I couldn’t get them to come loose. Paneled with bird’s eye maple, the side boards were one of the parts I most wanted to save. I ended up breaking one and popping the other loose with a pry bar.

This left only the very heavy parts, the reinforced wooden back and the metal soundboard, which I thought I could further disassemble. Even after I took out all the screws and bolts out of the dynamic duo, they still would not be separated. The sound board, which was made of thick iron covered with strongs, was definitely the heaviest part of the thing. It being nigh on evening by then, I decided to move the piano back to the wall and work on it later. As I was sliding it back, the box-shaped remainder started to tip over. It was much too heavy for me to handle alone, which is partially why it was so foolish to try and do the task to start with. I had to let it go, but as I did, it struck a piece of the wooden bottom on the floor and the back end jumped back up into the air, and found my lower leg.

The blow lifted me up slightly and made a very nice dent and scrape on the side of my shin.

A couple days later, a friend and I rolled the thing outside, end-over-end. By then, I was hobbling like a dottering old man. Besides, even disassembled, the piano still weighed at least 300 pounds. I couldn’t have done it without my friend, who stopped by looking for some braided wire to use in building his motorcycle. I didn’t have it, but put him to work. The following week, I hauled the rest of the piano to the dump and drug it off the truck.

Even days after the accident, I was still having quite a bit of pain and my leg was swelling and turning purple and yellow here and there. So I finally went to the doctor, who told me that the blow had basically caused internal bleeding, which had clotted and was now being absorbed by my body, but very slowly (and painfully). So, he told me to wear a support thing on my leg, which I consider to be a thick panty ho (both legs would be panty hose). He also gave me some medicine to help the pain, warning me not to try to write columns while taking it for the good of the public.

Out of the parts I saved, I did use the top hinge of the piano to put on the roof of my chicken house to make it easier to get inside and clean it out. I think I’ll use it to make a bookcase or something, I’ll just make sure that it is on a firm foundation — I wouldn’t want this whole piano story to end on a sour note.

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