My father’s a trucker, making my family technically blue-collar - and Dad’s taste certainly is. However, my mother raised us with middle-class sensibilities. We’re not the “middle-middle” with the sprawling cookie-cutter houses and labrador retrievers and SUVs, but only because we lack the money. My folks have a double-wide trailer that hasn’t had wheels on it in twenty years, a nicely-landscaped yard, a gazebo, a white picket fence, a minivan and a trio of pugs.
I work in retail, so I’m working-class myself, I think. However, I’m still middle-class mentally.
When I played the living-room game and picked my ideal choices, I got “middle-middle class” with some upper-class leanings. When I picked the equivalent of what I actually have in real life, I got middle-middle with lower class leanings. This is actually pretty accurate.
That’s the way I felt too. The vacation spots they listed weren’t what I was interested in. I chose “Napa Wine Tasting” because it is beautiful country, and it isn’t too far from Yosemite National Park, which of course would be my #1 destination. The Napa choice was a “new money” choice, and probably barely pushed me into middle class.
I didn’t understand that test for the furniture, though. I was a cross between middle class and old money (trust me, I’m not old money). Some of my choices were because of my family’s creative inclinations: the piano had to be there (we all play the piano), and the books and pottery had to be there because we all love books and my sister and I are potters, so of course there’s pottery in plentiful supply among all of us. I chose a painting from an established artist, because hell, if you stretched it a lot, I’m an “established” artist, (or if not me, definitely some of my friends) and I’ve sure as hell got plenty of artworks lying about.
Some of those choices made me “middle class,” others pushed me into “old money.” Okay, but I’d still choose them if I were living in a trailer park or as rich as Bill Gates.
I’m middle middle with the furnishings. I took it twice because I couldn’t decide between the piano and the wet bar, and the lab and the elkhound–but ended up with middle middle both times.
The Name That Class part apparently thinks I’m Old Money, though.
I had similar compromises in mind, yosemite. My plan was to head towards Branson, get off the bus, and hitchhike to Memphis, for some good music, replete with cheap booze.
Hrm. I didn’t like the third quiz; all the answers weren’t what I want. I wound up in a trailer park. The decorating one put me in middle middle class, but I don’t really want a dog, and the contents of the bookshelf weren’t any good!
But I guess I really am middle middle class. Growing up we were lower-middle (and DangerDad was just poor), but now I would put my folks and my own family at middle-class.
–Except, growing up we ate whole-wheat bread. Is that wrong? But my mom is kind of a hippie, and was always very into healthy/interesting food and some serious gardening, and we’re Mormon, and every good Mormon family in the 60’s and 70’s always made their own bread-- preferably by grinding the wheat themselves. (We didn’t have to grow the wheat, just grind it.)
