From Michael Chrichton, Jasper Johns (1977):

As a young child living in his grandfather’s house, he remembers being dressed in the kitchen, by the cook, in a new white linen suit. He didn’t want to wear it, and thew off the suit, which landed in a skillet of hot grease on the stove. His grandfather came in and began throwing him in the air, catching him, and spanking him as he fell.

He lived with his grandfather, but his father lived in the same town and saw him intermittently. Once his father promised him his watch when he was grown up. Soon after, Johns decided that he was grown up; he went to his father’s house and took the watch. His father came and took it back. “I guess I wasn’t grown up, after all.”