>My mental patient father abandoned me, my mother and unborn little brother before I was 2.
>My step-father was an alcoholic gambler.
>
>Oh. I guess you won that lottery too. Amazing how many winners we have among us, isn't it. I guess most of us did not grow up with Ward and June Cleaver as parents. Somehow we managed to muddle our way through anyway, didn't we?

>Did you blame other people because your opportunities were not as good as theirs?

NO - my mother would hear none of that crap.
She said:
* "The world does not owe you anything." - she meant it too!

>
>Oh, wait a minute. I think I remember hearing somewhere that the plural of anecdote is not data....

I can give you a whole country full of data - millions of anecdotes.
There is a quantity thing where anecdotes DO become data, right?

I can summarize with what one Romanian small business guy told me in 2007.
I was attending a friend's wedding in a small Romanian town.
The reception hall was communist era - crappy ventilation, it was stifling

I went on the balcony to breathe.
One look across the town and the material progress was self-evident.
Everybody had cars, some Mercedes, some Volkswagens and Fiats, and some crappy Dacia cars (communist-made)
Not everybody had a Mercedes, but everybody did have a car.

So, this guy figures out I am American and strikes up a conversation.

One thing he said really stuck with me:
He said
"15 years ago, we were all equal. Everybody had nothing. Just look at us now!"