You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a multicolored monastery in Atlanta.
We ate nothing but dry toast and scrambled eggs and we drank kamikazes, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Fridays we had jambalaya. I slept on a hammock in the bedroom. My four brothers slept in the salon.
I had to get up every morning at eleven to feed the bullfrog and the iguana. After that, I had to scrub the library and leave the blanket.
I walked thirty-eight hops through blankets of mist and dust storms to get to school every morning, wearing only a diamond bracelet and a set of dentures. We had to learn cartography and theology, all in the space of seven eternities.
Mom worked hard, making dry pain pills by hand and selling them for only five francs each. She had to observe every pain pill ten times.
Dad worked as a politician and earned only twenty-eight quarters a day. We couldn't afford any curling irons, so we made do with only an urn.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up dumb and dismal.