The Madding Crowd says What? Huh?

So, it's the day before New Year's Eve and I'm inquiring into a regular's New Year's Eve plans and he tells me, "Not much. Probably just doing something low-key. How about you? Going out with the madding crowd?"

And I'm like, "Huh?

And he leans in, assuming it must be the acoustics, "The madding crowd..."

            And I shake my head in ignorance.

And he says, "The madding crowd, I think it's somewhere in Shakespeare... You know, the tumultuous masses partying, getting all f*ck'd up..."

And I just shake my head at the same time that one of my coworkers is like, "Come on, you don't know what the madding crowd is?!?"

And I'm like, "Sorry, no..."

And the customer says, not without a hint of self-deprecation, "It must be my boarding school education finally paying off," as he nods his head in thanks for the cappuccino I just made him, before walking away.

Meanwhile, my coworker continues shaking her head, "Don't you have a masters degree?"

And I'm like, kind'a pissy, "Yeah, in philosophy." She continues to shake her head and I'm reminded of the time my friend Megan nearly had a heart attack when I told her I didn't know the history of Nero (all I knew about the subject then/now was that there was a Nero's Pizza in the first Home Alone movie), and I told her that I didn't expect her to know how Heidegger's project does/does not overcome metaphysics, so why should she expect me to share her highly specialized knowledge!

                 
                 

            I tell my head-shaking coworker as much, which didn't exactly make me feel any better about my ignorance.

But then I think, while making somebody else's drink: Hmm, the customer who knew what the madding crowd is went to boarding school on the East Coast, and my coworker who knew what the madding crowd is went to college on the East Coat. So I threw that out there to my head-shaking coworker, along with an "It's probably an example of regional knowledge" argument, which also didn't exactly make me feel any better about my ignorance.

 
                          

BUT THEN, I think, while making somebody else's drink: Hmm, the customer went to boarding school and my coworker went to private Catholic school in Portland before going to fricking Yale. So I speculate: Maybe my ignorance is not so much a straight-up education thing as an education plus class thing (I mean, shit, not only do I have a masters degree, but I've taken a handful of college-level Shakespeare courses, went to a pretty great public high-school, and have seen Woody Allen's a Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy a few dozen times), which is to say that perhaps my ignorance is a function of the fact that my parents never graduated from college, II attended public school my whole life, love watching/playing football and basketball and baseball, summer blockbusters, videogames and cartoons and beer and getting sh*t-faced (on occasions, like New Year's), which is to suggest that perhaps I am a part of the very madding crowd in question; while their knowledge is a function of...

               
                        

            So I threw the above out there to my head-shaking coworker as part/parcel to an "It's probably an example of class-based knowledge" argument, along with the barb that her and the customer that raised the issue grew up members of the class that designates others the madding crowd, which was why they knew what it meant while I didn't. I then told her that I'd bet some serious cash-money that if we went around and asked people whether or not they knew what the "madding crowd" was, that of those that said "Yes" we would find a STRONG correlation between that admission and whether or not they also went to private school as a youngster. Needless to say, my coworker didn't like this argument very much (she got flustered and was NOTICEABLY nicer for the rest of the day). I felt considerably better about my ignorance after making this last argument, and, in the aftermath, found out that the reference primarily refers to a novel by the English writer Thomas Hardy and a poem by English poet Thomas Gray. Shakespeare my ass!

 

                                 

           One funny thing for yours truly to consider in all the above, however, is that the customer that asked me the initial question ("Are you going out with the madding crowd tonight?") must have assumed, on some level, that I would know what he meant; this, coupled with my coworker's incredulous response to my ignorance ("Come on?!?"), perhaps means that I carry myself as if I designated others as the madding crowd... Don't know quite how to feel about this possibility.