Growing Up Middle Class

It is amazing how a person’s environmental and the contextual cues within it make a person hypersensitive to elements of self. Never before have I had such acute awareness of my upbringing—specifically, the fact that I’m middle class, as I do now.

For those of you that just met me recently, I’ll tell you the quick and dirty story of my upbringing. I was raised in a small (1600 people) farmtown in the middle of nowhere (Minnesota). My father was a lawyer, but not the stereotypical one that has gobs of money everywhere. My stepmother, for most of formative years, managed a group home for mentally disabled adults. My mother, who moved to Minneapolis after the divorce, spent years as a secretary, and now works in a job that is a hybrid of IT and Finance—basically, an office job. Simply put, my family is as middle class as they come. I was never afforded the luxury of brand-name clothes as a teenager, nor did I have to shop at the Salvation Army. I didn’t have a car of my own until I went to college, and then, it was a 1989 Pontiac Grand Am…very average indeed.

My friends are not all that dissimilar. Their parents are farmers, truckers, office workers, store clerks, and many other jobs that make up the heart of America. They are the middle class.

Many of my friends, like me, always had to have jobs. In some cases, bad jobs. Mike Taus even butchered chickens as a teenager! My first job was cleaning guts off of meat saws in the back of a grocery store. Others were not as lucky, and grew up in the middle of dangerous communities plagued with violence and drugs.

Most of my friends, and their parents, work harder than most wealthy execs. More importantly, they struggle more than these same execs. And while this should be entirely admirable, I do not find it to always be so in my mind.

In my time in Singapore, I have become increasingly aware of my upbringing, and frankly, I have an issue with it. In fact, if I were to dig as deep as I can into my own sub-conscious, I’d argue that much of the animosity I’ve felt toward my parents came not from the problems and struggles we had as a family, but rather, from a loathing that they were responsible for starting me out in life where they did. There is no way to apologize for this, but recognition can sometimes be just as relieving.

Apparently, it has always bothered me, but only now do I realize just how much. You see, in Singapore, many people I’ve seen have millions and millions, often inherited wealth. Easy lives with everything given to them, and yet, despite not having to work as hard, they are still ahead of most. The disparity of income is obvious in Asia, and living without envy can be challenging, especially when you perceive it as undeserved or unearned.

Should this bother me? Does it really matter how much money you have? Well, we all want to take the moral high-ground and say, “no”, but do we really believe this? I never claim to say it doesn’t matter. MONEY MATTERS. For me, it is not about the money per se, but what it represents. Becoming rich by earning it can be…validating. It represents knowing that just because you may not start out life with all the advantages afforded to others, you can still get it.

And that, my friends, is one of my purist motivations—to be filthy rich. At some point in life, I want to sit back, throw another million on the fire, and say to myself, “Just because you start middle class, doesn’t mean you always will be.”

I once heard that the reason Oprah never married Stedman is because his family would never accept her. You see, Stedman is blue-blood and Oprah had to scratch and claw her way to the top. And though she is now the richest woman in the world, she still cannot overcome the stereotype placed on her. Is this true? Maybe not, but it does serve as an example of a reality for many people.

Perhaps I will never believe I can be anything more than my roots tell me. However, my kids…they can be whatever I create. Note one more thing. Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, had several kids and subsequently, grandkids. I went to grad school with a girl that new one of the Walton granddaughters. Apparently, she was a spoiled b*tch that felt entitled to the wealth she never earned. I guess we have to be careful what we create after all... :)