Boredom Leads to Great Things 40
frequently in or around the library,” one of his teachers
said.^450
Steve Jobs suffered the same fate when he skipped one
grade. He was also a socially awkward loner who was often
bullied. Jobs solved the problem by changing school to the
best his family could find. It’s unclear why Elon didn’t
change school, maybe he couldn’t? “It’s pretty rough in
South Africa,” Elon’s siblings said. “It’s a rough culture.
Imagine rough – well, it’s rougher than that. Kids gave Elon
a very hard time, and it had a huge impact on his life. In
South Africa, if you’re getting bullied, you still have to go
to school. You just have to get up in the morning and go.
He hated it so much.”^278
Elon was often in a world of his own. “We’ll all be out to
dinner with him,” Maye said, “and someone will say, ‘Let’s
see a movie after dinner. Elon what movie do you want
to see? Elon? We’re talking about a movie.’ But Elon’s not
eating. He’s just sitting there. Thinking. ‘Okay, Elon’s not
with us for a while, we’ve got to let him be wherever he is.
Let’s, the rest of us, talk about the movie.”^49
It went so far Elon’s family thought it was something
wrong with him. “His brain was just ahead of everyone
else’s and we thought he was deaf, so we took him to the
doctor,” Maye said. “But he was just in his own world.”
The doctors took out Elon’s adenoids, but it didn’t change
anything. “It’s just when I’m concentrating on something I
tune everything else out,” Elon said.^50
Elon has always wanted to find out the facts. He has
always wanted the reality, so he never made things up