Last month I estimated Apple sells about 12 percent of its iPhones through its own stores. In a talk with Apple’s retail store leaders, Tim Cook revealed it’s actually 20 percent. So, I was quite off but that means the analyst who said Samsung sold more phones in the U.S. than Apple was way off and that was really the point.

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of the launch of the original iPhone, yet I celebrate it (ritual sacrifice and procession carrying the still-beating heart over my head to the nearest Apple Store) today. Because I didn’t get my first iPhone on day one.

While I was certainly impressed by the iPhone, I found the $499 price tag for a “phone” slightly off-putting. I didn’t quite get it yet (and, remember, the original iPhone didn’t have an App Store). Although I didn’t hesitate to steal the line about it that Glenn Fleishman coined sitting next to me during Steve Jobs’ introductory keynote — “the Internet in your pants” — the utility of that hadn’t really sunk in for me yet. My original plan was to take my time and try one out at a store.

And then Twitter happened.

My original iPhone along with a younger sibling, an iPhone 4S running iOS 7.

I had actually joined Twitter two months prior, but the iPhone launch was probably my first real collected experience on Twitter. One that I was watching from the outside. Oh, the shame and jealousy I felt, hearing about my friends, fellow Apple nerds and complete strangers standing in line for hours for a phone. And then opening the box and waiting for hours for it to activate. I was missing out on all that! I watched on launch night, but that was all I could bear. I went out the next day and walked right in to an AT&T Store and bought a 4 GB iPhone. Without Twitter and its good friends shame and jealousy, I probably wouldn’t have gotten one for weeks.

The 4 GB iPhone is apparently the iPhone that dare not speak its name, as Apple’s technical specifications page for the original iPhone doesn’t show a 4 GB model existed, just the 8 GB and 16 GB versions. Deny it if you will, Apple, but I call it a “collectors item”.

I still have that phone (pictured) and, yes, it still works. The battery doesn’t hold much of a charge anymore, of course, but it sure is a walk down memory lane. This is the device that, if I could take it back in time, would make my 14-year-old self plotz. That and the news that I would eventually have sex on a regular basis.

So, while I fully expected to get an iPhone some day, it was peer pressure that got me to buy it as soon as I did.

But don’t knock peer pressure. It also got me into alcohol. And look how that turned out.

(Really, really well.)

Apple’s “Made by Apple in California” ad and Tim Cook’s revised compensation package are less about charming Apple’s customers and Wall Street than they are about charming (and retaining) Apple’s employees.