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.
My Drawing Number Two looked like this:
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.