Boredom Leads to Great Things 39
be mean. He wanted to teach them something. “Don’t be
scared of the darkness,” he said. “There is nothing to fear –
it is merely the absence of light.”^49
Elon’s schoolteachers described him as quiet and unas-
suming. He was brilliant at math and science, and in love
with his computer.^290 Since Elon was ambitious and a fast
learner, he often criticized the other children when they
were wrong, and he corrected their minor factual errors.
“Cause if you don’t have your health, you don’t have
nuthin,” Elon was told. “Well, no. You do have a few things,”
he replied.^160 When the siblings discussed the Moon, one
of them said, “Look at the Moon; it’s a billion miles away.”
Elon knew the Moon wasn’t that far away. “Actually, it is
384 400 kilometers away,” Elon replied proudly. Everyone
else was silent. “On average,” he continued.^49
He didn’t correct other people because he wanted to
prove he was more intelligent than anyone else. He wanted
to help them. His classmates didn’t always understand this
help. They thought Elon was arrogant, and responded by
bullying him. They called him “smarty pants” and said he
looked like a muskrat, which is a larger rodent looking like
a large fluffy rat.^59 That he was the shortest one didn’t help
either – he had begun school a year early. “I would say I
was less happy than most kids,” Elon said. “I didn’t develop
any friendships. If you’re the small bookworm you get the
crap beaten out of you.”^4
Elon recalled that his two options to get away from
his tormentors were to either run or hide. He often hid in
the school library where he read books. “I would see him