On a middle-class life

Sorry that this post is so terribly long; it's an assignment that I had to do for my sociology class. We were supposed to write about our experiences with social classes and social inequality then explain what the two terms meant to us. I'm not really sure that I successfully answered the prompt, but I like the way it turned out so I'm sharing:
I come from what used to be a very small town; the community is growing and inches more and more towards becoming suburbia every day. You can’t expect to know everyone, but you can expect to discover at least one person you know every time you go to the grocery store. It is a town where the friends you make are close ones, and to me this means that the people of the community like being there for one another, no matter the circumstances. The majority of the population falls in the middle-class financially. Because of the particular experiences of my family, I associate living a middle-class life with living in a community of neighbors who share your struggles and your successes and are available and willing to offer any needed help. From my childhood, my parents have instilled in me a compassion for the needs of others as well as a sense of duty to try my best to alleviate those needs. They emblazoned this on my heart not through lectures, by through the example of their own actions.
One example that I remember most vividly because of the way it affected me as a child, is when my parents gave away their mattress. A family from the church we attended needed a new bed after the traumatic death of a family member. Immediately after learning of the need, my parents shoved their own mattress out of the house, into an awaiting trailer, and then to the home of the family. This particularly affected me because in the weeks before they bought a new mattress, my parents slept in my bed and I had to take on less comfortable lodgings. Being young, I didn’t understand the need my parents felt to make such a sacrifice. Since then however, I realize that from that experience I gleaned that helping others at one’s own expense is something that’s just expected in my family and to some extent in my town. Though my family did not immediately have the funds to buy a new bed, the need of the other family was more pressing and now that I am older, I see the sacrifice of my parents as less strange. I now believe that living in a middle-class community requires pulling together to share resources.
Another episode, which occurred when I was much older, brought me to another conclusion about social class. In November 2005, my town suffered a devastating tornado. The storm flattened the homes of many families; the neighborhood just behind my home was almost completely destroyed. Although we lost 26 trees from our backyard, my family was blessed to have our home still intact. The morning after the storm, my mom and I piled a wagon with sodas, coffee, and sandwiches then headed for our neighbors. In the neighborhood behind us, I saw the desperation on the faces of those who had just lost their homes. They stood amongst the rubble and were so grateful just to get something to drink. These people were my community, and I felt their anxiety, but I could not entirely sympathize. Suddenly these devastated people became “the poor” and “the needy” in my eyes. Overnight a neighborhood of ordinary middle-class folks had become those I pitied. This sense heightened when buses came to take these families to hotels or relatives. The road to get to the neighborhood was blocked by fallen electrical lines. With my parents’ permission, the families pulled their suitcases and wheelbarrows, full of their salvaged belongings, through our backyard, past our home, and to the awaiting buses. All I could do was to sit in stunned silence as the people filed passed our open kitchen door. My neighbors now seemed like charity cases. My family suddenly seemed to be of a higher social class because we had resources that those around us did not. Looking back on this event, I now believe that social class is determined by perspective.
From these experiences that I have described, I have gained my understanding of social class and social inequality. To me, social class is a general term to describe one’s status in his or her community. Because of the way our brains work, humans are more comfortable when we can put things into groups. The grouping of people in our minds is often based on our perceptions of social class. While statistics can determine someone’s comparable financial status, most social classes are relatively unspoken but tremendously felt based on one’s perceptions. Social class is all about the possession or lack of resources; this can be literal or simply perceived. All of the connotations and behaviors associated with the different “classes” in this country have their roots in the differing of resources. This partially feeds my perception of the middle-class as those who help others. I believe that this association is quite logical. The middle-class is most equipped to offer aid. Those in the middle-class have relatively stable finances and often the resources to aid those in need. They also are not exempt from struggles with money and can empathize when others need assistance. Those in the lower-class can better sympathize with need, but do not have the resources to meet needs. Those in the upper-class have plenty of resources, but cannot identify with their neighbors who struggle. I believe that social inequality is the thoughts and actions that arise from our perceptions of differentiated social classes. I experienced this after the tornado, when I saw my neighbors in a new way. My new impression of these people as having “less” than I did, placed them in a different category than myself. Social inequality becomes a major problem when an impression like the one I felt that day affects lawmakers and other people of influence. This term has negative connotations, but truly comes from a very I instinctual place in the human mind that feels the need to make associations. These groups we mentally create foster social inequality, but is that a tragedy? If my parents had not been able to make these distinctions, would they feel so inclined to always offer help? Do some of our perceptions of social class inspire our actions to “make the world a better place”? If there was no social inequality, could there be helpful, closely knit communities like mine? These questions will follow me into further exploration of social class and inequality.