Working class? You're soaking in it

You can't soak a chicken drumstick in teriyaki sauce
then cook it up and call it duck a l'orange, can you?
Neither can you grow up working class, go to college,
get a white collar job and call yourself middle class.

The problem with most Americans is that in spite of
living in a country that is supposed to appreciate people
of all classes, no one self identifies their own class correctly.
Everyone wants to be middle class. "My father was cop,
my mother was a teacher, there were 10 kids in my family
\and I had to move out as soon as I was 18 because
there wasn't enough room and my mother was expecting
another kid." Hmmmmm, yeah, that sound middle class
to me, too. Rubes. That's a quote by the way from some
chick I met at a party. We got to talking about class in
America and how no one self-identifies as working class.
She said she was middle class -- MAYBE lower middle
class. All I needed to hear was "my father was a cop."

She thought she was middle class because they lived in
a nice house. Doesn't matter. By what twisted logic does
working class equate with living in a shitty house? Working
class isn't lower class or shit. It means you work for a living.
Answer phones, flip burgers, put out fires, tote bails, haul
buckets of water, recycle scrap metal, type, data entry,
etc. and I hate to tell you this but you are working class --
even if your mom is a teacher. Because, and here's the rub,
most teachers are working class, too. Teachers as a rule have
my respect, but it is the one job a working class kid can easily
aspire to and succeed at. Teachers are in pretty short supply.
I could be a teacher in less than a year if I wanted. And you know
why? No one wants to do the job. Especially if they are of a higher
class. It doesn't pay that well. But to a working class kid, it ain't
too shabby. It looks white collar, but it's work.

My stepfather once told me something quite important one day
by accident. We were going to lunch after a busy morning
pouring a basement (that's pouring the concrete floor of a basement
under a house that's already been built which is suspended above
your head). We were heading to lunch at the 30 Club and I must've
appeared slightly embarrassed to be covered with dirt and drying
concrete. As I attempted to dust myself off -- an act of futility in
and of itself -- he said to me, "Never be ashamed of honest work dirt."
And I walked into that working man's club proud to know that everyone
who looked at me knew I'd been busting my balls all day. A tenderloin
sandwich never tasted so good before or since.

So no matter what I've done or where I've been, I have always
identified myself as working class, God damn it. Though, occasionally,
I tell people I'm leisure class just to throw them off the scent.

Here are some working class traits you might exhibit ... no matter
how much money you make:

Drinking shitty beer in a can.
Touching your junk.
Swearing without extreme cause.
Tire art.
Yard ornaments.
Eating the evening meal before 8 p.m.
Worrying that people might think you are working class.
Thinking Larry the Cable Guy is funny.
Bowling.
Bowling ironically.
Drinking wine because you think it makes you sophisticated.
Owning a big TV and referring to it as "The Big Screen."
Talking about gas mileage.
Knowing your gas mileage.
Camping.