Customer Communities

Preface

Two CEOs Growing Up Lonely

Nick Mehta

Middle school. Those two words bring anxiety to me to this day. Did anyone like middle school? Was it originally designed as some kind of torture mechanism? (Actually, my wife says she loved middle school and had friendship and joy throughout. How annoying!) For many of us, middle school brings up memories of awkward tween and teenage years, bodies changing in embarrassing ways, and struggles to fit in. Or at least that was my story.

For some reason, since kindergarten, I couldn't find my own group of friends in my Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, suburban school. I felt weird. I felt strange. I didn't fit in. And I got a daily reminder of that.

The highest-pressure routine in middle school happened at lunchtime. Each child grabbed their tray of greasy pizza and oily french fries and had to find a table to eat at. The cool kids sat in one section, the athletes in another, and the nerds in a third. But I didn't fit in anywhere. I didn't have anyone to sit with and was definitely not brave enough to introduce myself.

So rather than suffer the life-ending embarrassment of eating alone in public, I developed a routine. I'd grab my lunch and tray and pretend that I had big things to do as I scurried outside the cafeteria. I'd scope out the nearest open classroom—or the computer lab in high school—and endure my loneliness in isolation. I ate alone every day from age 6 to age 18.

We all carry with us the joys and scars of childhood. Despite ...