Alexa Caroline Modugno

Nov 9, 2021

Classifying my childhood isn’t easy. Perceptually speaking, I grew up with privilege. Tenafly. People assume everyone from Tenafly is snobby and fake. That assumption has validity, but I was an outlier. It’s a town where everyone knows each other’s business, social class, and not living on the “hill” made me a leper at my elementary school. It was an “illusionary” world, where being anything below 1% is a social disgrace. So I have the illusion of coming from wealth but really I was Middle class, and being middle class in the private school crowd is essentially like being a pariah.

And despite living in Tenafly, we can never have guests over so friends and family members think we’re “rude” by not being hosts due to our fancy zipcode. Our house is not well furnished from years of my parents slaving away their lives trying to give me the opportunities their…

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