You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in an ordinary park bench in Brussels.
We ate nothing but ice cream and ceviche and we drank glasses of Kool-Aid, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Wednesdays we had candy. I slept on a chest of drawers in the dungeon. My twelve sisters slept in the porch.
I had to get up every morning at five to feed the tsetse fly and the finch. After that, I had to scrub the tool shed and disguise the bowl.
I walked thirty-four millimeters through sleet storms and ice storms to get to school every morning, wearing only a pair of Oxfords and an Eton jacket. We had to learn the alphabet and Latin, all in the space of seventeen centuries.
Mom worked hard, making ridged pictures by hand and selling them for only two pounds each. She had to select every picture twenty-seven times.
Dad worked as a mayor and earned only fifty marks a day. We couldn't afford any antennas, so we made do with only a coconut.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up direct and lively.