1. You have a single spoon and fork. Every beverage and/or soup is consumed out of “the cup.”
2. You have dreams of leaving your hometown for some far away place you can reinvent yourself, some wild and distant land like Minneapolis.
3. Everyone makes their own bread.
4. You sleep on a lumpy mattress in a plain room. You consider bed frames an extravagance.
5. You toil at a backbreaking job for little to no pay as a way of paying off a mountain of debt. There is no hope for advancement. Your coworkers are all in their mid-40's and plan on dying on their jobs.
6. Marriage looks impossible and none of your friends will ever be able to save up for a dowry.
7. Your parents don't understand the new music you listen to. Most of it is heard in the backs of small, run-down bars in the city, where a single young man plays a small piano for 10-15 of his friends.
8. You think the presidential election was stolen by the Electoral College and threaten to move to Canada.
9. When you get sick, you just sit around and hope for the best. You have no money for a doctor.
10. Everyone has gotten real into small-batch whiskey lately and no one really enjoys it.
11. You often make plans to see your friends, only to realize you all work seven days a week at three different jobs and have no free time. You'll meet again at a funeral, one day.
12. Multiple generations live under a single roof with little privacy from your Nana or your little brother Jed, who is going through a woodworking phase.
13. Your parents still remind you that the neighbor's kid got into Harvard.
14. Horrible viruses devastate the population with little assistance from the federal government.
Life in the 1820's: 1-14
Life in your 20's: 1-14