Boredom Leads to Great Things
Winston Churchill didn’t like his life as a prisoner of war. One month after arriving to the prison in Pretoria, he climbed over the walls. “I had 75l [£75] in my pocket and four slabs of chocolate,” Churchill said, “but the compass and the map which might have guided me, the opium tablets and meat lozenges which should have sustained me, were in my friend’s pockets in the State [Staats] Model Schools.”11
Because the compass and the map were still in the prison, Churchill navigated through the city by using only the stars. “The night was delicious,” he said. “A cool breeze fanned on my face and a wild feeling of exhilaration took hold of me.” No one suspected he was an escaped prisoner of war as he wore a hat and a brown, civilian suit.11
Churchill walked towards the railway, which he found. He followed it until a train station appeared where he waited until a train arrived. As the train began to move again after a brief stop at the station, he jumped aboard one of the wagons where he hid among soft sacks covered in coal dust. Before daylight, Churchill jumped off the train, and knocked on the door of the first house he saw at a distance in the night. “Thank God you have come here,” the owner of the house said. “It is the only house for 20 miles [32 km] where you would not have been handed over. But we are all British here, and we will see you through.” Churchill escaped to the neighboring country Mozambique, and the achievement to escape from the prison made him a national hero in Britain.11
Another prisoner in Pretoria was the six-year-old Elon Musk. For an unknown reason, he had been grounded and thus prevented to visit a birthday party at his cousins’s house. He disagreed with the decision to ground him and felt it was an unjust decision, so he planned to escape and visit the party anyway.363
The first idea Elon had was to take his own bike, and he told it to his mother Maye. She decided to lie by saying that Elon needed a license for his bike or the police would stop him. He wasn’t sure if his mother had told him the truth. To be on the safe side, Elon decided to walk the ten miles [sixteen km] to the party.
He sneaked out of the house and began walking across Pretoria in a similar way as Churchill when he had escaped from his prison. While Churchill navigated by the stars to find his way through the city, Elon who had just learned how to read, navigated by reading the road signs to find out in which direction he should go.326 Due to Pretoria’s British heritage, he passed the many colonial buildings and the double-decked buses driving on the left side of the road.
The stroll across Pretoria took four hours. Just before Elon arrived to the party, Maye saw him walking along the sidewalk and he saw her. Maye had earlier arrived to the house to leave Elon’s siblings Kimbal and Tosca who were allowed to visit the party. Elon decided retreat was the best option. With the speed of a dog chased by a cat, he climbed a tree where he stayed until his mother promised she wouldn’t give him a punishment. He came down and returned home where he continued to be bored as so many times before.
Elon became bored easily. Since he didn’t have many friends, the options he had at the time were to either play with his siblings, read books, or watch television. Elon described the television shows in South Africa as horrible. He didn’t like watching television shows like CHiPs, a series about two motorcycle police officers, and Die Man van Intersek, a dubbed version of the series Gemini Man. What didn’t bore him was to read books and comics.56
Elon could read almost everything he could find for up to ten hours per day. Sometimes he read two books a day.51 When the family went for a walk, Elon disappeared into the nearest bookstore where he could sit on the floor in his own world. The booksellers had to chase him away when they got tired of him. While attending dinner parties with his mother, he often brought a book with him to read if the table neighbors were not interesting enough.59
The books he enjoyed most were about a hero who felt a duty to save the world and the books about adventurous explorers.59 He read The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, everything by Jules Verne, the Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov, and everything by Robert Heinlein, including The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land.126 While reading the books by Jules Verne, Elon became interested in physics. He could read them several times. “I was completely mesmerized by how Verne presented glimpses into the future, and envisioning things, such as submarines, spaceships, and space voyages, ahead of their times,” Elon said.62
Many years later, his favorite books would include the biography on Benjamin Franklin and the biography on Steve Jobs – both written by Walter Isaacson. He especially enjoyed Franklin’s entrepreneurial spirit.324
Elon read all the comics available, from Batman to Iron Man, from Superman to Green Lantern.324 Little did he know that when Iron Man became a movie in 2008, Elon himself was the inspiration for the movie version of the comic’s superhero Tony Stark.
When Elon ran out of books and comics to read, he began reading encyclopedias, and he read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Maye recalled how her son remembered large parts of the encyclopedia after finishing it.117 His sister Tosca gave him the nickname “genius boy” because she thought her brother was a genius who could remember everything.327
Because he read so much, Elon gained knowledge other children around him didn’t have. One story took place outside of his grandmother’s house. Elon played together with his siblings in the garden. It was about to get dark, so everyone except Elon went inside the house. “Come on Elon. Let’s go,” they told him. But Elon refused to listen to them. He thought the night was beautiful. Tosca said, what everyone except Elon thought, that the dark scared her. But Elon didn’t remain outside in the dark garden to 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 unassuming. 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