You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in an archaic homeless shelter in Seoul.
We ate nothing but cotton candy and corn on the cob and we drank old fashioneds, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on alternate blue moons we had Froot Loops. I slept on an end table in the oubliette. My eight sisters slept in the master bedroom.
I had to get up every morning at four to feed the hyena and the mustang. After that, I had to scrub the solarium and inflate the shovel.
I walked twenty-six furlongs through rainstorms and sandstorms to get to school every morning, wearing only a nose ring and a flak jacket. We had to learn Chinese and chemistry, all in the space of nineteen minutes.
Mom worked hard, making fuzzy staplers by hand and selling them for only eight dimes each. She had to chop every stapler twenty-six times.
Dad worked as an entomologist and earned only forty-nine pesos a day. We couldn't afford any calculators, so we made do with only a beach ball.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up talkative and relaxed.