You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a prickly chalet in Hawaii.
We ate nothing but chocolate-covered ants and cookies and we drank sarsaparillas, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on alternate blue moons we had bonbons. I slept on a bed in the workshop. My two brothers slept in the foyer.
I had to get up every morning at three to feed the lovebird and the dolphin. After that, I had to scrub the atrium and hide the sponge.
I walked twenty-two millimeters through driving rainstorms and rainstorms to get to school every morning, wearing only a lab coat and a hair net. We had to learn science and recreation, all in the space of five days.
Mom worked hard, making automatic cowbells by hand and selling them for only sixteen half-dollars each. She had to sharpen every cowbell twenty times.
Dad worked as a filmmaker and earned only thirteen pfennig a day. We couldn't afford any accordions, so we made do with only a bag of potato chips.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up excitable and jaunty.