Ever wake up to find something you love trapped in the past? Part 3

Paul Solman from Newshour’s business desk designed a quiz that asked, “Do You Live in a Bubble?” It aimed to chart par- ticipants’ connections to white and blue collar worlds.

“Did you grow up in a family in which the chief breadwinner was not in a managerial job or a high-prestige profession (defined as attorney, physician, dentist, architect, engineer, scientist, or college professor)?”

Thanks to their fathers, most of the men in my family of my father’s generation climbed an economic rung and became eng.neers. I clicked “No.”

“Have you ever held a job that caused something to hurt at the end of the day?”

“Yes.”

“During the last month have you voluntarily hung out with people who were smoking ciga- rettes?”

“Nope.”

“During the last year, have you ever purchased domestic mass- market beer to stock your own fridge?”

“Yes.”

And so the quiz went. I scored dead center in between blue and white collar preferences. It was no surprise, but there it was. My angst was tabulated perfectly illustrating just how much I was hanging between two worlds.

My desires were evenly spread across the two. My reality, however, is another story. Besides the Coors Light that I stock wheneverer my dad comes over, few vestiges from my childhood remain.

The large parties that went late into the night, along with the voices that ushered them in, I never meant to leave them in the past.

I got lost in my own world, thinking about what was easiest for me and almost missed what was going on right before me, to my own family.

Ever make a choice without realize you’re making it? This is a concept that our politicians understand all too well. Our desires can trick us, leave us stranded, looking through our white picket fences without realizing what is happening in our own backyards.