You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a queer penthouse in Tijuana.
We ate nothing but lamb curry and ham and we drank Scotch and sodas, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Thursdays we had refried beans. I slept on a couch in the study. My twelve sisters slept in the tool shed.
I had to get up every morning at three to feed the dolphin and the butterfly. After that, I had to scrub the rec room and feel the hip flask.
I walked twenty-nine steps through blankets of mist and bits of precipitation to get to school every morning, wearing only a trench coat and a leotard. We had to learn grassland management and business, all in the space of nine centuries.
Mom worked hard, making gooey urns by hand and selling them for only nineteen doubloons each. She had to pat every urn twenty-nine times.
Dad worked as an optician and earned only three bitcoin a day. We couldn't afford any yardsticks, so we made do with only a diary.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up generous and irate.