My family and other people

When I finally got my driving license after 3 tries, I wished I hadn't. The first time I went for my driving test in Ames, Iowa, it was with my friend S who had taught me how to drive. The road out of the motor vehicle office was narrow. I took off confidently down the middle. "Go back", said the angular and stern test taker after just a hundred yards or so, "this is a two way street and you are driving down the middle of it." In my defence, there were no markings on that road. Anyhow, that must be the fastest anyone has ever failed a driving test. The story was that there were two testers in that office, the mean one and the nice one. Everyone sympathized with my misfortune at having gotten the mean guy on my first outing at the DMV. It was the luck of the draw, there was nothing you could do about it. One person had tried to outsmart lady luck and had gone to the neighboring city of Nevada for his test. And who should be his tester that day, but the very ...

My family was the very definition of middle class - rich in education and culture, never going without basic needs; nevertheless, needing to watch our spending. My father was a doctor, the sort of person that is often rich, however, he chose to work in a low-paid job at a mission hospital and later, in a salaried position. So my mother always looked for bargains and made do with the second best choices. We knew a lot of poor people - they worked in our houses, did all the manual labour that had to be done. But their clothes were worn, their speech was unrefined, they didn't sit on our furniture or eat out of our dishes, they were simply not "like us". No one actually said it - but in reality, they were considered a lesser type of person. So there was no question of ever comparing ourselves to them! That's how prosperous, entitled people like ourselves were defined as "not rich", because, funnily enough, it was perfectly fine to compare ourselves to the peo...