When I look at teenagers today, I wonder whether I was ever really their age. They seem so much more self-possessed, so much more mature than I ever was. As a teen, I was a mass of insecurities, raised basically as an only child—my brother is ten years older— by working-class parents (my father was a tobacco farmer and ran a country store) who had never attended college. They pushed me to do well in school, and, like a good boy, I complied.