"The crowd is untruth."
          — Soren Kierkegaard

The young man felt the burden of his epiphany. People needed telling. The problem was getting them to listen. Rush, rush, rush everywhere — so unsettling. People busy 'getting ahead,' and finding that ahead, by its very nature, is difficult to get to, have little time. This he knew. He also knew that he had to present his story in a brief attention grabbing way that people could easily understand.

Sometimes the social worker knocked on the door when he was over burdened with the world's deafness. It was luxurious to sit back and listen to the knocking and her calls of his name. Sweat revenge to pretend to be deaf when the noise could be deafening.

Sometimes his calling, and the noise in general, could become so loud. He would sneak out and buy tape to cover the bits round the windows and doors where the noise got in.

So much noise and no one listening.

Why must that woman, qualified helper of the people, call him Wally? He had told her many times. "Please," his mother always insisted on politeness, "call me Walter. I prefer to be called Walter." Sometimes she remembered for a while. He had got sick of waiting for her to lapse.

His mother never called him Wally.

Sometimes the children at school had called him Wally. Repeating the word - not his name - redolent with another meaning; repeating it over and over 'til it rang in his ears. They said he was a real 'Wally,' giving the name the requisite sharpness with their sneering tone. They would see soon.

It was the name calling, which had prompted his mother to withdraw him from school. It had all come to a head one day in the playground, when he had lost control. The principal pulled him of his chief tormentor.

The correspondence course 'couldn't stress enough the importance of knowing your market.' The business he was in was literature: the message was crucial. The difficulty was convincing the market of the worth of the truth that blessed and plagued him. You had to know what made people listen.