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We knew the foosball table wouldn’t fit through the basement door with the handles sticking out. The handles needed to come off. Since I could care less whether or not we sold the foosball table, Joey had to work on getting the handles off. He went downstairs with a bunch of tools and about half an hour later, called me to come help him take it up the basement stairs.

Our plan was to slowly carry it up the stairs and then bring it out past the laundry room and into the garage where Joey would re-assemble the handle bars. I cleared out the dog dishes and other obstructions that cluttered the hallway, thinking we would be bringing the foosball table through in a matter of seconds. I went down into the basement and found joey standing at one end of the foosball table, ready to lift. I grabbed my end and was fortunate enough to be the person going up the stairs first. I say “fortunate” with a mixture of sarcasm and seriousness, because my position had equal advantages and disadvantages. For some reason, before I picked up the foosball table, I did not think it was a very heavy object. Oh how wrong I was! It was easy to pick up and maneuver the table around on a level floor, but once you start fighting gravity the weight seems to double.

I started walking backwards up the steps and after the third one I had to stop. It was getting harder and harder for me to walk up the stairs. The foosball table was gaining more and more weight and I could no longer find proper footing. The two front legs took up an entire step, thus making it impossible for me to stand as close to the table as I could before we started up the stairs. I now had to stand a step above the table, lift the table in the air, move one foot up a step, pull the table up towards the next step, move my other foot to the step above and then let the table down on the stair. The process was exhausting, but at least i wasn’t joey. Joey remained at the bottom and had to maintain pressure on the foosball table, lest it tumble back towards the basement, crushing him along the way. But then again, it was easier for joey to lift the foosball table up to the next step. He only had to push, I had to pull and it was much harder to pull.

So after much struggling and slipping and pushing the foosball table’s two front legs were on the last step of the basement. I lifted it up and pulled it onto the tile floor and felt a little relieved. At this point Dad walked by and informed me that I better not scrape the tile floor with the foosball table’s metal legs. I promptly thanked him for all his help. I thought that we would be done very soon. I turned around. The garage was in sight!!!

I called becky and told her to go hold screen door leading into the garage. I got my second wind. Joey had only four steps before he too would be out of the basement. I picked it up and Joey lifted and pushed up to the next step. 3 more to go!! We lifted again, but before Joey had reached the next step, the foosball table stopped moving. I looked at joey and he looked back at me. “Did you let go?” I asked. “No,” he responded with a confused look on his face, “I thought you did.” I said that I didn’t, so we both shrugged our shoulders and tried again, with a little more force, to get through the door. We lifted again and pushed and then I heard a “SNAP” and a piece of black plastic soared through the air and landed right in the foosball table.

“What was that?” I asked. Joey picked up the piece of black plastic, examined it, and then shifted his gaze to the side of the foosball table and exclaimed, “Crap!” I looked where Joey looked and saw that there were two, small cups on either side of the foosball that made it too wide to fit through the basement door. These cups are used to drop the foosball the in to begin the game. We had broken one, the other was ok. The cups or what was left them, had to come out. Joey noticed that they were held in by two small screws. Dad was now very curious and had taken it upon himself to be the supervisor of this incident that was close to becoming a disaster. We searched for a screwdriver that would fit the screws and was also small enough in length to fit between the table and the wall of the stairwell. It was a very small space and there wasn’t a screwdriver small enough.

Dad, struck with inspiration, took a philips bit from his electric drill and attached to a ratchet, making it possible to squeeze into the tight area and remove the screws. Becky, to my surprise, had remained at the door leading to basement waiting for us to come through. I told her it might be awhile and the she could go back and watch tv, which she did. After joey had finished taking off the first cup, he reached up to hand it and the screws that held it, up to me. I reached down to take it and as i was reaching down I was the philips bit drop from ratchet in joey’s hand and fall into the goal of the foosball table. “Crap!” yelled Joey again. Joey set the ratchet down and with one hand reached into the goal trying to fish the bit out and with the other still held out the cup and screws. I then took the cup and screws from his hand, but as i brought them up towards me, I lost my grip on one of the tiny screws and it too fell into the goal of the foosball table. Joey then glared up at me, obviously angry. I replied a simple, “Whoops.”

After retrieving the bit and the screw, Joey removed the other cup. We were now finally ready, to finish our ascent of the basement stairs. We were both in the hallway at what must have been 20 minutes since we started. Now we could take it into the garage. I called becky back and told her to go hold the screen door again. We opened wide the solid door and slowly moved towards the garage. Becky and Dad suddenly yelled at us to stop. “What?” I asked. Dad told me that the foosball table would not fit past the heavier door because the doorknob sticks out too far. Then becky after examining things in the garage told us that she doubted whether or not we would be able to turn the foosball table past the shelf that was against the wall in the garage.”So what do we do?” I replied. Dad said we had a couple options. We could try taking the foosball table out the back door and around and into the garage. Or we could take the door of its hinges and move the shelfing and hope that maybe it would fit past. I selected the first choice. So we started to turn the foosball table towards the kitchen, but my corner quickly hit the wall. It wasn’t going to be that easy. Dad said we should trying backing it up back into the basement and then bring it forward angling it towards the kitchen. I didn’t think that would work and dad pulled out a tape measure and confirmed my suspicion. We HAD to go out through the garage.

Dad gave me a hammer and a screwdriver and after a few minutes the door was off and stowed temporarily in the laundry room. Joey hopped over the foosball table and we went into the garage to make room for the massive foosball table. The primary obstacle was the metal shelf against the wall. We need to push it out of the way. But nothing in our garage is free standing. Every single item in the garage leans on or is leaning on something else. The shelf was also supported 4 picture frames, one giant table, assorted pieces of wood and a giant, green crate. We move all these and then finally the shelf. We were ready to go.