About this time Q was playing with his older sister, and in the course of a scuffle his hand slid down his sister’s body and over her breast. Q distinctly felt a nipple catch for a moment beneath his fingers, and he was instantly terrified for fear that his sister would bleed to death. The breasts, he thought, must be partly filled reservoirs of blood, since they were soft and yielding. During his fourth year Q’s grandmother died, and he was horrified to think of what would happen to one he loved. He had seen a photograph of a reclining nude with a beatific smile and the caption “Death” beneath. From this he surmised that people were undressed when they died, and lowered naked into the ground. But he had seen worms in the ground, and the worms would attack the body. Since the nipples were prominent and therefore easy to reach, the nipples would be eaten through first. He shuddered to think of the worms gnawing away at his grandmother’s nipples, and sometimes woke up in a fright, having dreamed that the worms were biting off his own nipples. Once Q came running into his aunt’s house and discovered a small infant cousin nursing at the breast. His aunt hastily readjusted her dress. Because of the care with which the breasts were guarded from exposure by his mother, sister, and aunt, he leaped to the conclusion that they had something to do with the secret relations of men and women. He had all sorts of trouble trying to figure out how these relations were conducted, but when he was about eight he originated a theory that temporarily solved the problem. Q figured that a man and woman must lie on the bed with their faces close together. The male would then squeeze the breasts, alternately pressing and releasing them, as if they were balloons. Then they turned over and rubbed their anuses together. Not long after, he completed his theory of procreation by imagining that children must be born through a hole in the stomach from which the blood gushed copiously. The cutting must be very painful and bloody. Haunted by the fearful prospect of a world which might at any time knock a hole in his body and deprive him of blood, Q was a bundle of excessive timidities. He was afraid of his grandmother’s cat, he ran to his mother if he saw a dog, and he was afraid that a horse would bite off his hand if he fed it. He hated to watch a ball game for fear a foul tip would hit him, and he avoided bugs, worms, and lizards like the plague. Q never put up a fight outside the house, and cried when the other boys of the neighborhood bullied him. Sometimes he was taunted as a Jew but he never fought back, much to the disgust of his father. His forebodings spread to thunder, lightning, fire, redness, and numerous articles of food.