¶ Intuition of the Child (2)
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Index Entry
Intuition of the Child:
"your specialty. You have to have your little private tollgate that society will have to go through. I remember when I was young, specialization was not quite as prevalent as it is today; but older people kept asking you, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up? Do you want to be a policeman or a fireman?’ and so forth… At one time I was asked that and I don’t actually recall it very clearly but I was reminded by the family telling it over and over again. When I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said I would like to be a cow. I recall then, the people asking me why I wanted to be a cow. And I said, ‘All this beautiful green grass…’ the idea of being allowed to be out in that green grass with the flowers and so forth, and go around eating. I loved the grass. It seemed to me a beautiful preoccupation. However, this is the sort of answer that children give that is so powerful.
“A friend of mine has a nephew-- he’s very young-- and the nephew was being taken to his grandmother’s, and on the way he kept talking about his grandfather, and they said to him, ‘Darling, you forgot your grandfather died.’ He said, ‘What, again?’ And to this little child grandfather is immortal.”
