I make a joke out of everything.

Humor has historically been treasured by the working and lower classes. Shakespeare used comic relief characters in his tragedies to appeal to the “groundlings,” i.e., peasants who paid a penny to stand at the ground level to see his plays. Hal Roach’s Our Gang shorts, featuring poor Depression-Era children and their antics, often poked fun at the wealthy. Popular TV prime-time sitcoms from my childhood specifically appealed to “blue-collar” humor (i.e., The Simpsons, Roseanne, Married With Children, etc.).

When you’re an “in-between” kid, you know that sometimes life just flat-out sucks. Sometimes your job is tough, your teacher is being unreasonable, and your friend’s mother thinks you’re a “bad influence” because you mistook her decorative towels as actual towels.

“Oh, a thousand pardons, Mrs. A. I’ll just wipe my hands on your shower curtain like a civilized human being.” (Photo by Francesca Tosolini on Unsplash)

Humor becomes important for this reason. Non-rich people use humor as a temporary reprieve from the suckiness of life. It breaks the tension.

Even today, this is normal for me. No matter how dire the situation, I always feel the need to have a comedy routine for it. Too much seriousness makes me uncomfortable. Wisecracks help me deal with it.

One of the things I’ve noticed about middle-class people is that the higher their income, the less of a sense of humor they seem to have. They always come across as far too serious, failing to understand my tendency to unapologetically laugh about everything. To them, being jokey is inappropriate because they never had to rely on making jokes, on account of they can actually afford therapy.

Or, even worse: they’ll take my jokes way too seriously, over-analyzing every word I say as if I’m one of those pretentious novels written by some stuffy bore I had to read for English class. I’ve thought about interrupting them mid-sentence and asking if they’d prefer to use APA or MLA format in the essay they’re writing about my joke.

“Since the beginning of time, people have often utilized humor. My peasant friend Lisa Marie is no exception!” (Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash)

Dishwashers and air conditioning are optional for me.

My childhood home did not have a dishwasher or central air conditioning. The house I grew up in wasn’t bad — just old. It was built in an era when central air wasn’t a feature in most homes. During the summer, we kept screens on the windows and fans to keep the house cool. Oddly enough, I don’t remember the house being a problem; our lack of air conditioning didn’t really cross my mind until we visited someone’s house and they had it.

We also had an antique kitchen sink, which did not come equipped with cabinets (although we did have cupboards and drawers in our sink). Even if we wanted to put in a dishwasher somewhere, we didn’t really have space for it alongside the refrigerator, oven, and huge kitchen table. Thus, we went without one. I grew up washing dishes by hand — the old-fashioned way.

This changed when I got my first apartment in college; suddenly, I had central air and a dishwasher for the first time ever. While I’ve had these luxuries ever since, I still could easily live without them. In fact, even today, I prefer to wash the dishes by hand and just use the dishwasher as a drainboard.

None of this is odd to me. However, every time I say this in the presence of middle-class people — who cannot fathom life without these luxuries — they look at me as if I’m a Dickensian pauper.

‘Ello, gov’na! (Image Credit: Cineguild Productions)

I will order either an appetizer or an entrée — but never both at the same time.

Around the time my now-husband and I first met, we went to a local TGI Fridays to eat one evening. This was our first time going to a sit-down restaurant together.

“What are you getting?” he asked as we sat with our menus.

“An order of potato skins,” I responded proudly. This was my usual order when I went here.

“Okay. What else?”

“That’s what I’m eating,” I said, confused. “I’m eating potato skins.”

“That’s not a meal!” he exclaimed. “That’s just an appetizer.”

Turns out, my husband and I had different ideas about eating out. He came from a firmly middle-class background, so to him, “appetizers” were the snack you ate as your “real meal” was being prepared. In his mind, you could not make a meal out of an appetizer; you were supposed to order an entrée.

To me, a kid who grew up working-class, an appetizer was a viable meal option when we went out to eat. My parents didn’t care; in fact, we regularly hit up Applebee’s when they served their half-price appetizers for this reason. In addition, even if I did eat an entrée, my family wasn’t in the habit of ordering extras alongside the main course like appetizers or desserts. The idea of ordering both at the same time was a bit foreign to me.

Even today, I still do not like to order both at the same time. I see the price of entrées and laugh — why on Earth would I spend $12 on buffalo wings when I’m already spending $15 on a hamburger with a side? In my brain, this is ridiculous; if I’m going to spend $12 on something, that’s all I’ll be eating.

Better yet, I’ll just take that $12 and hit up Taco Bell. I could get 3 meals out of $12 there!

I’ll just be needing more of this. (Photo by Roberto Sorin on Unsplash)

I know how to always make the best of less-than-ideal situations.

From 2015–2020, I did not have a car. For the first 3 years, my now-husband (boyfriend at the time) had one. I went back-and-forth between using his car and taking the bus if he needed it.

Then, in early 2018, his car went kaput. He had just finished graduate school, so we did not have the money for a new car at the time. Now, both of us were taking the bus full-time. This means we took the bus to everything: work, grocery shopping, appointments, the laundromat — anywhere. This meant that if we wanted to go out, we would have to plan our outing around public transit so we wouldn’t have to spend $25 one-way on rideshare. It also didn’t matter what the weather was like — rain, shine, tidal wave, even in the aftermath of a tornado ruining our neighborhood — we got on that bus regardless, because we had no other choice.

Cities always seem to think bus stops are the best places to pile all the plowed snow. (Photo by Eugene Prunk on Unsplash)

If you’re middle-class, this probably sounds like a ridiculous hassle to you. In fact, whenever we mentioned not having wheels of our own, middle-class people’s reactions would range from contempt to pity. Not having a car sounded like the most tragic circumstance imaginable.

However, I didn’t feel that way. As annoying as it arranging alternate transportation could be, I didn’t mind taking the bus. In fact, I recognized all the positive things about taking the bus. I could travel all around the city for half the amount of money I’d spend on gas every week. When I went to a baseball game, I could enjoy a frosty ballpark beer without worrying about driving home — the bus was a reliable designated driver. The only laundromat on our bus line that took credit cards was nearly an hour away; I used that time to catch up on audiobooks and podcasts. I was also quite proud of the fact that I could carry $70 worth of groceries across a busy parking lot and an even busier intersection to get to a bus stop — all by myself, in less than 5 minutes, while it was pouring rain. (How many middle-class wives can pull that off?)

The point is that I found a way. My life didn’t fall apart because I lost something convenient. I found a way to make it work and I adapted. Which, in my opinion, is one of the best things about being working-class: you learn how to make things happen.

Ha! Amaeuer. (Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash)