When I was in my 20s and early 30s I assumed everyone had gone through a lot of craziness in their lives. I grew up in poverty with parents who did not always "follow the rules", usually out of need ("following the rules" often takes more money than the poor have - mandatory insurance to drive, registration fees, inspection upkeep, even clothes nice enough to not be picked on in school). And I have a lot of crazy stories involving drugs and drinking and even fighting from a very young age (I started smoking around 12 and smoked my first joint at 11). I was never shy about talking about all the crazy things that happened and assumed everyone had had different but comparable insanity growing up. Then a guy at work got mad at me and told me everyone knew I was lying when talking about my past. I was shocked and thought about what others had told me and I realized that it wasn't commonplace in their world. And now I am 55 and work in a corporate office full of the petite bourgeois and they talk about ski trips and long vacations and difficulty getting contractors to change their house "just so". I used to feel like an alien but got used to it over the years. I even dress as nice or nicer than them since I know where the thrift stores are in the more affluent neighborhoods. And I have come to realize that they have no idea what I went through and I never share it. It would make me too much of an outsider at work and not be good professionally and I have a family to provide for. And I have come to realize that everything I went through, all the craziness, was related to our poverty. I am not relinquishing my responsibility at all. Everyone is responsible for their own choices. It's just that my world had a different set of choices than theirs. As a kid my parents couldn't afford to keep a car running for work AND paying insurance premiums on it, nevermind keeping it in good enough shape to pass inspection AND pay for the inspection fee. I am actually grateful for those experiences because I was smart and strong (and lucky) enough to learn from them and not be torn down from them. And I know that, had a lot of my coworkers experienced the craziness and self destructiveness of poverty they probably wouldn't have made it. I have a lot of extended family that didn't, and most of them started out as smart, brilliant kids. My kids are growing up in a different world and that makes it all worth it. I guess the point is, people don't really consider what others who are not like them have went through. It's often just alien to their experience. And when they watch movies or read books about it, it's either fiction or at a distance.