David McElroy

I’ve never had any understanding of peer pressure. All my life, I’ve heard teenage behavior attributed to peer pressure, but it never made any sense to me.

There has never been a time in my life — even for a moment, as far as I can recall — when I wanted to be “cool” in order for people to like me (or for any other reason). I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be understood and admired. I wanted people to love my work.

But at times when I didn’t get the admiration or understanding I craved, I never wanted to adopt someone else’s mannerisms or look or attitude. I simply wanted to persuade people to follow me instead.

I was listening to an interview today with a co-founder of a major software company, and he was talking about why he went through a period during his teens when he got into trouble a lot — with his parents, with religious figures, with school authorities and even the police. He said he was hanging out with a teen who was a bad influence — because that guy was “cool.”

And it suddenly hit me that I was born without that gene. I never wanted to be like those people. I never wanted to be anybody other than myself.

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