I remember feeling pressure when I was a kid to say I was middle class when we had some sort of assembly where a guy came in and taught us the difference between ‘needs’ and ‘wants’.

Somewhere in there kids were telling what class they were and I felt the need to say my family was middle class when we were nowhere near that, but I remember my dad saying we were ‘middle class’ at one point or another during my childhood, so I didn’t know any better.

My mom used to wake my 3 sisters and I up at 4 in the morning to go pile into the backseat of the frozen ass car to drive my dad to work. This was so she had the car to then take us to school at 7:30, and she could run errands if necessary later on. I would get made fun of at school for my shoes being so small that my big toe stuck out the front and for my coat not zipping up properly because it was too small. This in brutally cold midwestern winters.

We ate casseroles or hotdogs or soup for dinner most nights and we weren’t rich enough to bring “snacks” to school for “snack time” so I was always one of a couple of kids that had a family that couldn’t afford to send snacks to school, while other kids were eating their gushers and fruit roll-ups and whatever else right in my face.

But you know… I’d be damned if I was going admit to anyone that we were poor as fuck.