Ayinde came up with a new story to tell about his socioeconomic status. For example, when he spent summers at home instead of at the Hamptons, he figured he at least got to spend more time with his parents. He might mine that for an uplifting anecdote if someone asked—and it would likely be too unexciting to prompt many follotrailw-ups.

I asked Ayinde to teach me how to do this. I was also too poor to go to sleepaway camp as a kid. But people in my circles can’t seem to resist sharing fond memories of various expensive enrichment activities they took part in as children. One news website has a perennially popular article titled “You Are How You Camped,” as though dropping five thousand dollars for your preteen to kayak is a baseline of human experience. When people ask me what I did during summers in middle school, I’m usually too embarrassed to reveal the truth, which is that I watched TV alone all day. For years, my “interesting fact” at get-to-know-you sessions was that I don’t like Radiohead, the band everyone likes, simply because I had no interesting facts, because interesting facts are for rich people.

And I understand the discomfort of being on the other side of that exchange. When I lived in L.A., where college degrees are less common than in the pointy-headed media world, I sparked many an awkward silence by asking people I had just met, “Where did you go to college?” We assume people on equal footing with us had identical trajectories, and revealing the differences can be painful.

Here’s Ayinde’s advice for that situation: Is there anything that happened while you were home, not at camp, that was interesting or nice? Or is there something you’re planning to do next summer? You could say something like, “No, I didn’t get a chance to go to camp this summer, but I’m hoping to hike the Appalachian Trail after I graduate.”

These types of verbal pivots allow you to create a narrative that staves off your interrogators without making you feel insecure about your differences. It’s uplifting, but it’s also true. And it underscores that your story is still being told.

“The past is something that you can’t change,” Ayinde told me. “But what you do now, you have control over.”

Emma, Part III

One day when I was visiting my family in North Texas, I drove out to a small town near Fort Worth, where Emma Gingerich, the woman who grew up Amish, now lives.

She’s now in her early thirties, has an MBA, and loves hockey and football. Her hair is dyed black and she often wears striking makeup that accentuates her absinthe green eyes. For a while after college, she thought of moving to Washington state, but Texas pulled her in, like tree roots growing over an unsuspecting stone.