When I was six years old, I saw a magnificent picture in a book about the primeval forest called *True Stories*. It showed a giant boa constrictor in the act of swallowing a wild beast.

The book said: *"Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that, they are unable to move, and they sleep through the six long months that they need for digestion."*

I thought deeply about the adventures of the jungle, and with a colored pencil, I succeeded in making my very first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked like a brown, smooth, rounded hill.

I proudly showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups and asked them if my drawing frightened them.

They answered: *"Why should anyone be frightened by a hat?"*

My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were completely unable to understand it, I made a second drawing: I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have everything explained to them. My Drawing Number Two was the inside of the giant snake with an elephant trapped inside.

The grown-ups advised me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. That is how, at the tender age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been thoroughly disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.

So I had to choose another profession. I learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown all over the world, and geography, most certainly, has served me quite well. At a single glance, I can distinguish **Arizona from Texas**. That is remarkably useful if one happens to get lost in the dark of night.

In the course of this life, I have had a great many encounters with a great many serious people. I have lived a long time among grown-ups. I have observed them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.

Whenever I met a grown-up who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I wanted to see if he was truly a person of genuine understanding. But whoever it was, he or she would always say: *"That's a hat."*

Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to their level. I would talk to them about bridge, golf, politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible, practical man.