The failure of grownups to understand the meaning of my illustrations was almost unbelievable. Those same grownups could be frequently seen reading newspapers and magazines (and on exceedingly rare occasions, books) with immense satisfaction and quite in spite of the fact that there was no difference between those journals and my own efforts that I could see.
    Then, gradually I realised that there was this thing called writing, which amounted to a secret code with strange symbols which in turn were apparently linked to sounds. Arrange the symbols in the right order, and almost anyone could read it and say exactly what the writer had intended they should say. I copied the symbols assiduously from the newspapers, and later, began to make them up myself. After a time, I became rather good at it.
“Horrie, are you sure this is our son.”
“You’re the one who ought to know.”
“He’s writing in a foreign language.”
“That ain’t no foreign language. It’s gibberish.”
“Oh Horrie, it’s you letting him play with the toilet paper that’s done this. I knew it would come to no good.”
“I dunno. Half the stuff yer read in the newspaper ain’t much better.”
“Horrie, he’ll be off to school next year. It isn’t you who’ll have to explain this to his teachers.”
“Tell ‘em he comes from Mars.”