ADULTHOOD:
If your father went to college
If your father finished college
If your mother went to college
If your mother finished college
If you have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
If you were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
If you had a computer at home
If you had your own computer at home
If you had more than 50 books at home
If you had more than 500 books at home
If were read children’s books by a parent
If you ever had lessons of any kind
If you had more than two kinds of lessons
If the people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
If you had a credit card with your name on it
If you have less than $5000 in student loans
If you have no student loans
If you went to a private high school
If you went to summer camp
If you had a private tutor
If you have been to Europe
If your family vacations involved staying at hotels
If all of your clothing has been new and bought at the mall
If your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
If there was original art in your house
If you had a phone in your room
If you lived in a single family house
If your parent own their own house or apartment
If you had your own room
If you participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
If you had your own cell phone in High School
If you had your own TV in your room in High School
If you opened a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College (When my grandfather died I got a small inheritance and opened a mutual fund account instead of blowing it all on stupid things — it’s still my only savings.)
If you have ever flown anywhere on a commercial airline
If you ever went on a cruise with your family (sadly, yes)
If your parents took you to museums and art galleries
If you were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

CHILDHOOD:
If your body does not bear long-term signs of malnutrition. (For example, teeth marked up from poor nutrition when they were forming.)
If you had orthodontia. (Unfortunately, or fortunately, I had about ten years of orthodontia.)
If you saw a doctor for anything other than emergencies or school-mandated shots.
If you heated your home with clean-burning fuels or had properly vented heating.
If you grew up in a house without vermin. (We did live in the woods, though, and mice and bugs are a common nuisance.)
If you had running water.
If you had a basement or foundation under your house.
If you had an indoor toilet.
If your parents and immediate family were outside the criminal justice system.
If you yourself remained outside the criminal justice system.
If your parents had a new car.
If you never went barefoot so that you could ’save your shoes for school.’
If your parents never argued in front of you about having enough money for food to last out the month.
If you ate hunted and fished meat because it was a recreational activity rather than as the major way to stock a freezer.
If your laundry was done at home in a washer rather than in a lavandaria. (When I was a teenager, Mom got a wild hair up her ass thinking that taking the laundry to the laundromat instead of doing it at home would save her a lot of time by doing it all at once. That lasted about a month.)
If your hair was cut by a professional barber or hair stylist instead of your parent.

THOTS:
I don’t deny at all that I come from relative privilege, and that this privilege affects my current economic and cultural status. But I can think of a few experiences that change the way I think about privilege, mostly the structure of my family and my parents’ experiences with privilege and how their legacy affects me.

• My parents were both from the rural South, and while Mom’s family were middle-class business owners, Dad’s family of poor farmers certainly was not. He didn’t have an indoor bathroom until he was in high school. When my parents married, if I recall correctly, Mom’s parents put both Mom and Dad through college, and Dad’s folks responded by accusing him of getting uppity. Upon graduation, Mom became an elementary special education teacher and my father became a salesman for an agricultural company that he stayed with for the duration of his working life. My sisters were born shortly after my parents married, and I remember one story Mom relayed that consisted of her agonizing over whether to buy my oldest sister a pair of cowgirl boots or the week’s worth of groceries. Mom chose boots.

  Without telling their story for them, my parents clawed their way out of poverty through education, and in turn the expectation of achieving educated class status was paramount in my childhood. My parents never held back on buying books, visiting the library, going on class trips, participating in sports, whatever, because they valued the educational elements of these experiences — and I know that they allowed my much-older sisters the same educational freedom despite being in worse financial shape than they were by the time I came around. And although I racked up a huge amount of debt going to an in-state college (financed largely on my own with grants and loans), my parents filled in the money gaps knowing that Ethan and I would be far better off if I had a college education than if I did not. I also know looking back that some of my mother’s paranoia about “what will the neighbors think?!” is inarguably related to the appearance of higher class status and her fear of falling backward.

  I never attended a private high school, but I did pay tuition to go to a different jr. high/high school for about four years. The change in expectation levels between schools was too much for my brain (and ego), and I soon found myself hanging with the burnouts smoking pot during the open campus lunches. After getting in an unreal amount of trouble during my sophomore year, the tuition was revoked and I ended back up in the county high school. Which, for the record, is still better off than most of the public schools in the country.

  Educationally, I’ve been very privileged. I can say without a doubt that many kids I was raised with had the privilege of money and things without knowing the privilege of learning. It’s a value my parents imparted on me that I share without question.

• I had a TV in my room about five minutes. Shortly after allowing me to get a TV in my room, Mom took it away from me and declared that the television was the downfall of the American family. I mostly agree with her.
• Cell phones were still rare when I was in high school. I did have a beeper.
• Without trying to sound fatalistic, I’m not sure how well I will do financially compared with my parents. I had a child young, and while I did graduate from college, I have struggled to find a stable job, and now that I have a stable job, to make ends meet. Chef and I have only been married for a few months, but our combined income is still relatively small. We’re well below the median national income level and significantly below the Indiana state level, but then, we’re young. Who knows?