I went to Catholic school from kindergarten through 12th grade and in my first (K-6) I felt very upper middle class, based mostly on the fact that my house was bigger than my friends’ houses. Then I got to my 7–12 school and that was kind of a culture shock. I went from being one of the richest kids to one of the poorest (“poorest”; we were never anything approaching poor).

I only really brushed up against the edges of our upper class, mostly when I went to classmates’ houses to work on projects, but it kind of blew my mind. I’d figured my family had it as good as it got and I didn’t really believe that truly rich people existed outside of books.

My younger brother was significantly more popular than I was, since I was an unattractive nerd and he wasn’t, and he had some friends at school who were apparently crazy rich. I still remember when my parents came back from taking prom pictures at one kid’s house because they couldn’t stop talking about the insanity of that house. An indoor pool!