That’s right. The children had been complaining for weeks about the television set. The picture was going out and that death John Donne spoke so fondly about was advancing rapidly down over the edge of whatever was playing that night, and there were also static lines that danced now and then like drunken cemeteries on that picture.

Mr Henly was a simple American man, but his children were reaching the end of their rope. He worked in an insurance office keeping the dead separated from the living. They were in filing cabinets. Everybody at the office said that he had a great future.

One day he came home from work and his children were waiting for him. They laid it right on the line: either he bought a new television set or they would become juvenile delinquents.

They showed him a photograph of five juvenile delinquents raping an old woman. One of the juvenile delinquents was hitting her on the head with a bicycle chain.

Mr Henly agreed instantly to the children’s demands. Anything, just put away that awful photograph. Then his wife came in and said the kindest thing she had said to him since the children were born, ‘Get a new television set for the kids. What are you: some kind of human monster?’

The next day Mr Henly found himself standing in front of the Frederick Crow Department Store, and there was a huge sign plastered over the window. The sign said poetically:

TV SALE.

He went inside and immediately found a video pacifier that had a 42-inch screen with built-in umbilical ducts. A clerk came over and sold the set to him by saying, ‘Hi, there.’

‘I’ll take it,’ Mr Henly said.

‘Cash or credit?’

‘Credit.’

‘Do you have one of our credit cards?’ The clerk looked down at Mr Henly’s feet. ‘No, you don’t have one,’ he said. ‘Just give me your name and address and the television set will be home when you get there.’

‘What about my credit?’ Mr Henly said.

‘That won’t be any problem,’ the clerk said. ‘Our credit department is waiting for you.’

‘Oh,’ Mr Henly said.

The clerk pointed the way back to the credit department. ‘They’re waiting for you.’

The clerk was right, too. There was a beautiful girl sitting at a desk. She was really lovely. She looked like a composite of all the beautiful girls you see in all the cigarette advertisements and on television.

Wow! Mr Henly took out his pack and lit up. After all he was no fool.

The girl smiled and said, ‘May I help you?’

‘Yes. I want to buy a television set on credit, and I’d like to open an account at your store. I have a steady job, three children and I’m buying a house and a car. My credit’s good,’ he said. ‘I’m already 25,000 dollars in debt.’