My family was pretty solidly in the middle by the standards or our area of rural New Hampshire. Then I went off to a fancy, expensive private liberal arts school in western Mass, where in my sociology class we (anonymously) reported our rough household incomes and I was very much NOT in the middle, at least compared with the students in that particular class. I guess the number of people I knew who had brought their horses to college and got picked up for winter break in limos should have tipped me off…