Kenneth was expecting to go to jail. There’s no excuse, the judge had said, for donating your eyes so that they can look at other people in the nude. The eyes have to be connected to your brain. They might be your eyes, but when they’re connected to someone else’s brain, they’re not sending messages to your brain.
The same goes, said the judge, for donating your private parts. You’re not going to feel a thing.
Kenneth was shamed. How was he to know? In the process he’d lost more than his eyes. And now he was losing his reputation as a fine academic; a graduate of both Oxford and Harvard; the most promising student of all time; one who was known locally as the “Star of Balliol” – a title once given to Gerard Manley Hopkins but now conferred upon Kenneth.
Haven’t you the balls to see, O Kenneth, that organ transplants don’t work like that?
But Kenneth was brighter than most. He knew things that others didn’t. He thus lived a life of secret debauchery. His organ donations ensured that he was depraved beyond belief. Well, his organ donations would’ve led to such sinful depravity if the surgeon hadn’t mistaken his testicles for eyes.
Anyway, this rather profound story is to encourage readers, upon an unexpected death, to donate organs for transplant. There’s a shortage. Be generous!