You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a fresh ranch house in Aurora.
We ate nothing but tortillas and tuna casserole and we drank shots of bourbon, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on alternate blue moons we had corn on the cob. I slept on a windowsill in the servant's quarters. My eight brothers slept in the doghouse.
I had to get up every morning at five to feed the Pekingese and the musk-ox. After that, I had to scrub the bedroom and freeze the trash can.
I walked seventeen fathoms through gales and pelting rainstorms to get to school every morning, wearing only a cowboy hat and a beach towel. We had to learn dance and hotel management, all in the space of one hour.
Mom worked hard, making plain buckets by hand and selling them for only seven ha'pennies each. She had to monitor every bucket seventeen times.
Dad worked as a photographer and earned only twenty ha'pennies a day. We couldn't afford any saddles, so we made do with only a pair of scissors.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up disagreeable and haggard.