7/8ths of my family is decidedly working class. Then there's the 1/8th that's actually painfully easy to research, and includes the dude who wrote the worst poem ever published in the English language.

I have a fraught relationship with class. A lot of what's considered polite or good manners was expressly rejected by my father, who (due to his own issues with his mother and the grandmother who represented the 1/8th above) saw it all as the worst sort of sophistry. (While still being the only one of his siblings to go on to university.) My mother's an odd duck, and agreed.

A lot of my childhood was spent getting into trouble with teachers and fellow students and their parents for things that were acceptable or encouraged at home.

Like I've said, I was raised by wolves.

I've definitely learned the hard way about etiquette niceties that just wasn't part of my world growing up.

I got a funny email from my aforementioned friend:

We had a most excellent time. I may mock your organic, farm fresh, Whole Foods style, but damn do I love to eat it!

I never really though about it. I always thought of it as an adventurous/non adventurous way of looking at life. My mom's family is more working class-- she didn't go to college, but one sister did.Her family eats a lot of food that they can grow or catch.actually they eat fairly broadly if not exotically . Dad's family is middle class, but very boring eaters. Matt family ate well but with a leaning to the german side.

I know my family changed because 1) my mom didn't cook and therefore had no reason not to try something and2) my dad was flying all over the word and he brought home ideas. When I started cooking -- I pushed it further with a lot of vegetarian dishes. For Matt and his brothers, the change came when Matt got a job in a french restaurant -- he learned to cook from the chef. All of us tend to be foodies now, and some cousins are and some are not.

Manners: we had kitchen table manners and dinning room table manners. There were even different levels of formality when dad was home than when he wasn't. Very greatful for this. It means that even if I am not comfortable in a situation I can fake it. and I seem to know instinctively which is which. I swear that manners are a survival tool.

eta: I even bought a fun cartoony manners book when I was a kid. that's a bit weird.

When I was really little (birth until kindergarten) we lived in Riverdale in the Bronx, which was very weird, class-wise. My sister went to kindergarten and first grade at a private school, but my parents switched her to public school for second grade. One of the big problems at the private school was that the other kids were teasing her for things like not having a live-in nanny, not having a river view apartment, not having a father who made international business trips, and so on.

I was either young enough or oblivious enough that I didn't notice most of that stuff. I noticed that some kids had more toys that I did, or had toys that I'd asked for and been told that they were too expensive, but it didn't really matter to me.

In college, I was very aware that a lot of my friends thought of me as "rich" because I didn't have any students loans, I didn't have to work during the summers, my parents paid for my clothes and books and stuff, and I could fly home a few times a semester. I hated being thought of that way, and became really super-conscious of not acting in any stereotypical "rich" way. But on the other hand, there were a lot of other kids on campus who came from way more money than I did -- the ones whose parents would pay for them to to go Cancun on spring break, and stuff like that.

I've definitely learned the hard way about etiquette niceties that just wasn't part of my world growing up.

I guess that regardless of how one is brought up, there will always be differences between, well, anybody and somebody somewhere (does this sentence make any sense? Or English?).

In Israel, the whole notion of class is almost entirely attached to the where-you-immigrated-from issue.

Ashkenazi immigrants (from the various European and Eastern European areas) were always (and by "always" I mean, of course, the last 100-and-a-bit years, because there was hardly anybody here before that) considered a higher class than the Sepharadi immigrants (mostly from the North-African areas).

Ashkenazi immigrants (from the various European and Eastern European areas) were always (and by "always" I mean, of course, the last 100-and-a-bit years, because there was hardly anybody here before that) considered a higher class than the Sepharadi immigrants (mostly from the North-African areas).

In the US, most of the Sephardi immigrants, until very recently, were Spanish and Portuguese Jews who'd come over a few hundred years ago and were generally very upper-class. Lots of universities and museums and hospitals and stuff with Sephardic names. Then the next "rank" would be the German Jews, who tended to be middle to upper-middle class, lots of them came over in the mid to late 1800s and opened stores -- lots of the American department stores (until they all got bought out by Macy's) had German Jewish names. And then the Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Eastern Europe, who mostly came over escaping pogroms, came here with nothing, lived in the crowded tenements, were toward the bottom of the bunch. For the first several decades, they mostly worked in sweatshops or as street peddlers and things like that. One of the Yiddish newspapers in the early 1900s would frequently run notices like, "Mrs. Rose Katz's husband has left her. She has six children, and the youngest two aren't in school yet. She doesn't have anyone she can leave them with when she goes to work, so she can't get a job. She is willing to give the two youngest children to a good home with people who can take care of them."

My mom's family spoke Yiddish. My dad's family spoke German. When they got married, there were several comments from both sides of the family along the lines of, "Well, at least s/he's Jewish." My mom was always very insistent that my sister and I use our absolute best manner when we visited my dad's parents.

The guy showed up at 9:15, which wasn't bad. Of course, it was 10:30 before I got to work, but at least another thing is done.

Whenever my family comes to visit me in Chicago, I have to remember that and take them to the appropriate restaurants. Places that aren't too fancy or expensive, or have what they would consider "weird food" on the menu, or anyplace where I'd have to translate the menu for them.

This is my family. The problem is that I don't normally eat at any restaurants that fit that bill.

My mother has always been very defensive about class and education issues. Her mother left school in the fifth grade in order to take care of her siblings after her mother died of tuberculosis. Her father quit school to work on the railroad, partly because he didn't like school. He had no use for higher education, so my mother didn't go to college even though she had a scholarship.

My father's father was a self-made son of immigrants who valued education, and my dad went to college and his friends from college were from higher classes. Mother has always been convinced that anyone with a college degree is looking down on her. This is a woman who was the salutatorian of her class, editor of the yearbook and a champion debater. When I got to college, a lot of my fellow students were from worlds I couldn't imagine. Hell, Bunker Hunt's daughter was on my freshman hall.

You people should send your families to visit me! Once my parents came to visit, and we basically only went to diners all weekend. Some more upscale diners, but still. I did not plan it -- those are just the places I like and that were convenient!

NB: My parents like "weird" food.