This book is not for good children. Good children will not benefit a bit from reading my memoirs. It is even no use bothering. Bad children however - that is another story. Bad children will find in this astonishing story a lot of useful ideas, a number of valuable examples, and above all much understanding and sympathy for their miserable lot. I even wanted to write: oceans of understanding and sympathy, but it occurred to me that it would sound just as an excerpt from a book for good children. And my incredible adventures are true as the truth itself, the most most true.
My name is Peter, because I was born in the year when all the girls were given Agatha and all the boys Peter as their names. My father works at the Aviation Institute, although he always showed signs of rather musical talents. I wish to explain in the very beginning that my old man is no sort of a spaceman nor a supersonic apparatous test pilot. He does something in the counting machines' office. Perhaps he simply adds and subtracts or divides and multiplies. I never ask him about it because he is very touchy. Mother does what all mothers do; she cleans, cooks, sometimes does a little washing and keeps worrying all the time. And when she stays at home alone, she takes an easel from behind the wardrobe and buckles down to painting. Father calls it waterproof painting, because mother uses oilpaints. I guess you understand everything, don't you? It is easy to imagine such a home. And it is difficult to be a good child if you have such parents. I have just remembered that there is one more person living with us - Miss Sofia. I meet her now and then when she is on her way to the bathroom or the kitchen to look for an apple. For Miss Sofia is always on a diet. When she occasionally has dinner with us, she prods the empty plate with her fork so nervously that I am afraid that all of a sudden she will grasp at the dish of potatoes, and devour them with one mouthful, in a fury of a starving person. Miss Sofia never talks to us. I suppose she holds us in utter contempt. Miss Sofia is my big sister. She is in the first form of grammar school, where they teach according to a new experimentale programme. Even father isn't able to help her with maths. Anyway, she never asks him to.
It was a TV set that was my first conscious visual and auditory sensation. Since that time I have quietly seen a couple of thousands X-rated films. I am not writing it to make boast of it. I just mean that I know everything. Anyway, I don't care too much about watching those films. But what else am I to do? I suffer from sleeplessness and I fall asleep not earlier than about eleven. So willy-nilly I spend hours in front of television not to go nuts of boredom. Besides sleeplessness I have one more weird fault. I hate children, and particularly the younger ones and those of my age. I could possibly hang around with the older ones, but they don't want to. In that case my father and mother are the only alternative. Father knows that one should be a good father, so in the beginning he pretends to have fun while playing with me, but in no long time he becomes upset, and then flies into a fury. Mother - yes, but it is not that fun with mother. I have to hoe my own row. I have read all the books I could find at home. I've examined even "The family doctor," although I was repelled by the gut-wrenching pictures. The Encyclopaedia is no hot potato for me any more. Let alone Esperanto, which is such a minor and trivial hobby.
I am afraid that some stupid kid will start thinking again that I keep boasting. I don t care about it at all. If you really want to know, I don't care about a single thing. I am writing about all those things only because it is crucial to the further story; a story which will make your hair stand on end, which will make you look, all in tears, for your mummy, and which won't let you sleep tonight. Briefly speaking, I want to say that, thanks to the circumstances of my fate, I know everything. Life can't offer me any puzzles. And, as a matter of fact, I could peacefully pass away. For what else is there for me to experience? Nothing. Probably you won't believe what I am writing about. I guess you think I am a manager, a journalist or a sour activist of some sort. No, I am Peter, who's in the fourth form, and who in this fourth form has to hide away his real knowledge with a great skill. Here is the proof for it. My self-portrait. I drew it one day when our TV was out of order, and mother pinned the drawing to the underwear wardrobe. And this is the way my mother sees me in her waterproof painting. I want to enlighten more ignorant children that my mother is an abstractionist. Of course, you have no idea what abstraction is. But I have no intention to explain the word to you. I don't intend to stoop to your level at all. I will keep using difficult words all the time. I don't care about it. We live in the time when there is no room for ignoramuses.

Excerpt from Zwierzoczlekoupior by Tadeusz Konwicki (translated by Marzena Ksiazkiewicz).