[Intro - a single bare fingerpicked guitar, voice entering very close and low]

[Verse 1 - the trigger, plainspoken, grave]
I came home from a meeting better than twenty years ago
A preacher I admired had preached the evil of the television
And the sermon was still burning in me when I came through my own door
Just a young man with a fire and a houseful of the world to set in order
And I meant to set it in order that night

[Verse 2 - the scene and her two refusals]
And there sat my love in the front room watching something, a sitcom, nothing more
I told her it was evil, I told her it was sin
She looked at me and she said plainly, no, it is not
I told her then that she would have to stop
And she looked at me again, and she said no

[Chorus - the cord]
So I bent down and I pulled the cord out of the wall
And I carried that television through the middle of my house
With the cord dragging behind me along the floor
And my wife just standing there, her eyes filling up
Cord dragging behind me
Cord dragging behind me

[Verse 3 - the motive, the blindness]
And I was not in a rage, I need you to understand it
I believed with my whole heart that I was keeping her from harm
I was only going to set the danger in some other room
A husband at his work, a husband doing his protecting
And I could not see her tears for all my holiness
I could not see her crying

[Chorus - the cord]
So I bent down and I pulled the cord out of the wall
And I carried that television through the middle of my house
With the cord dragging behind me along the floor
And my wife just standing there, her eyes filling up
Cord dragging behind me
Cord dragging behind me

[Bridge - the turn, the seeing]
It was not long, a few short months, a year, maybe two
Before I saw the danger in that house had never been the television
The danger was a man too sure of God to hear his own wife
A man who ran his bride to tears and called it love

[Final Verse and Outro - the cord as what trails him]
I set that television down a long, long time ago
But I have dragged that cord behind me every year since
Through every quiet room I have walked, I still can hear it on the floor
And I still see her face
Cord dragging behind me
Cord dragging behind me
I am still the man who carried it
And she is still the one who cried