You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a small resort in Iowa.
We ate nothing but ramen noodles and borscht and we drank gin sours, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Sundays we had sushi. I slept on an umbrella stand in the master bedroom. My six sisters slept in the guest room.
I had to get up every morning at twelve to feed the eel and the ladybug. After that, I had to scrub the cage and box the coin.
I walked twenty-six millimeters through rainbows and typhoons to get to school every morning, wearing only a bowler hat and a fez. We had to learn zoology and Latin, all in the space of ten months.
Mom worked hard, making sophisticated hubcaps by hand and selling them for only four crowns each. She had to strike every hubcap twenty-four times.
Dad worked as an Internet celebrity and earned only sixty-nine pounds a day. We couldn't afford any elephant tusks, so we made do with only a Kindle.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up bellicose and spindly.