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Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature , about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.

In the book it said: “Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion .”

I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle . And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One.

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.

But they answered: “Frighten? Why should any one 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 not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of a boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained.

The grown-ups’ response , this time, was to advise 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 why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been 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 then I chose another profession , and learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown a little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has been very useful to me.

At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable.

In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately . And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.

Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted , I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say: “That is a hat.”

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