You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a magnificent stinky shack in Bogotá.
We ate nothing but Swiss cheese and ceviche and we drank 7-Ups, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Wednesdays we had egg rolls. I slept on a coat rack in the corridor. My four sisters slept in the parlor.
I had to get up every morning at four to feed the grasshopper and the airedale. After that, I had to scrub the tool shed and see the key.
I walked twenty-seven miles through bits of precipitation and blizzards to get to school every morning, wearing only a hair net and a bonnet. We had to learn English and herbalism, all in the space of fourteen blinks of an eye.
Mom worked hard, making hollow buckets by hand and selling them for only twenty-three francs each. She had to crack every bucket seventeen times.
Dad worked as a carpenter and earned only forty stock options a day. We couldn't afford any beach balls, so we made do with only a cell phone.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up cunning and gentle.