“If you please, draw me a sheep.”
Or: How I Learned To Love Putting Things In Boxes
There’s a scene in The Little Prince that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently.
If you haven’t read The Little Prince before then you absolutely should. It’s a French novella written in 1943 by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and it’s one of the very best children’s books ever written.
Actually, that’s not true. It’s not a children’s book so much as a book about childhood; written for grown-ups who’ve forgotten how to be children.
The narrator, a pilot like Saint-Exupéry himself, crashes his plane in the Sahara desert. He’s found by an otherworldly child — the little prince of the title — who greets him with a very strange request:
“If you please, draw me a sheep.”
The pilot is dehydrated and sleep-deprived, so he doesn’t question who this angelic moppet is or where he came from. Instead, he draws several sheep, none of which are to the little prince’s liking. This one is too sickly, that one’s too old, that one’s actually a ram (“It has horns!”). Exasperated, the pilot finally draws a box with three holes on the side and tells the prince: “That’s its crate. The sheep that you want is inside.”
To the pilot’s surprise, the little prince declares that it’s exactly what he wanted.
Like Saint-Exupéry, who drew the beautiful watercolour illustrations that punctuate the book, I had dreams of being an artist (specifically a cartoonist) before I realised I was more adept with words than with drawings. I was pretty good at copying, though, and I can still do a pretty decent attempt at Homer Simpson. Perhaps in another life I’d have made a decent art forger. But even though I never became the next Matt Groening, I have developed a lifelong doodling habit.
This habit came from my mother. I have distinct memories of her talking on the phone, a pad of paper at her side, sketching and shading rectangles to make abstract mosaics that sat alongside scribbled-down notes and numbers, with the odd flower here and there to brighten up the page.
I tend to draw cubes. Four quick lines to make a square, another one overlapping it in one corner, four more strokes to join them up — hey presto, a nice little box. According to professional handwriting analysts, doodling cubes and boxes is a sign of someone who’s “analytical, organised and in control.”
Normally I’d put people who describe themselves as ‘handwriting analysts’ in the same box as astrologers, homeopaths, and Tarot readers. And then I’d put a brick on top of the box to make sure they can’t get out. The thing is, I think they might be on to something.
One could use a lot of words to describe me, but “analytical, organised and in control” almost certainly would not make the shortlist. In my more deluded moments, I like to believe I’m the proverbial duck: smooth and graceful on top, frantically peddling away underneath. Unfortunately, my poker face isn’t that good. The truth is, I’m worried nearly every hour of the day — braced for the sound of the smashing plate that I forgot to keep spinning. It’d be nice to have an extra pair of hands, or eight.
That’s why I’ve found myself thinking about The Little Prince and the sheep in the box; not so much the sheep itself, but the reason that the little prince needed it in the first place. He lives on a tiny asteroid, and much of his day is spent pulling out the baobab plants that live there. If he doesn’t uproot them right away they’ll grow larger and larger and eventually destroy his little home. So he asks the pilot for help: a sheep will eat the plants for him and make his life easier.
Some days I feel like my brain is filled with baobab plants. Their roots go deep. If I’m honest, I’ve nobody to blame but myself; I didn’t do a good enough job of weeding. I put it off, the same way one puts off going to the dentist to get a toothache checked out, and now it’s too much of a job for me to handle on my own. Even if I got my act together tomorrow and went to see a doctor, the UK’s healthcare system means it could be months before I’m able to speak to someone who’s equipped to help in a meaningful way.
For now, I have to content myself with drawing my little boxes.
Lately, I’ve taken to putting three holes on the side of each one.
The sheep that I want is inside.