Well thank you for saying so, and yes I tell my story in part to prick the Just World / The System Works bubble that I perceive as predominating around these pa

Well thank you for saying so, and yes I tell my story in part to prick the Just World / The System Works bubble that I perceive as predominating around these parts. Like, to me, I might casually mention I started working at age 8, and someone responds “Uh, that is child labor.” To which I reply, no shit it’s child labor. By 12 I was putting in 40 hour weeks during summer, under the table, for a respected professional pillar of the community. And someone will say, “This happened in America? Exploitation!” Well maybe, but to me it was a godsend, and the one and only reason I was able to buy my first computer and learn programming. Of course that isn’t how it would go in an ideal world, but how can anyone mistake this world for an ideal one? You answered that question. And my early life (on second thought, the rest of it too) wasn’t all-ghetto either. It was always very checkered. Every part had aspects of real privilege and real poverty. Maybe the only thing it didn’t have was any consistency :) On a different note, it just occurred to me that we talk a lot about impostor syndrome, but never about the kind I had. Usually it’s about one’s skills and ability. I never had that, but I had it really, really hard about my class, and that never went away, either.