You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a sleek convent in the Czech Republic.
We ate nothing but cabbage and succotash and we drank Mai Tais, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on alternate blue moons we had sushi. I slept on a piano in the solarium. My four sisters slept in the billiard room.
I had to get up every morning at three to feed the finch and the beagle. After that, I had to scrub the dining room and decorate the coconut.
I walked four inches through ice storms and blankets of mist to get to school every morning, wearing only a pair of earrings and a pair of shin guards. We had to learn dressage and constitutional law, all in the space of twenty eternities.
Mom worked hard, making gleaming helmets by hand and selling them for only twenty nickels each. She had to submerse every helmet twelve times.
Dad worked as a flight attendant and earned only twenty-three million dollars a day. We couldn't afford any calling cards, so we made do with only a cookie.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up playful and portly.