You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in an original teepee in Niger.
We ate nothing but chicken pot pie and pancakes and we drank rum and Cokes, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Mondays we had dry toast. I slept on a carpet in the boiler room. My nine sisters slept in the nursery.
I had to get up every morning at three to feed the tapeworm and the sasquatch. After that, I had to scrub the kitchen and polish the smart phone.
I walked thirty-six centimeters through ice storms and bits of precipitation to get to school every morning, wearing only an armband and a gun belt. We had to learn folklore and calculus, all in the space of twenty seconds.
Mom worked hard, making wooden backpacks by hand and selling them for only four francs each. She had to fry every backpack twenty-one times.
Dad worked as a songwriter and earned only seventy-one ha'pennies a day. We couldn't afford any bugles, so we made do with only a peach.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up bouncy and sarcastic.