You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a burgundy mobile home in Lebanon.
We ate nothing but lobster and moo goo gai pan and we drank glasses of buttermilk, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Fridays we had French fries. I slept on a wardrobe in the garage. My eleven brothers slept in the attic.
I had to get up every morning at eight to feed the lamb and the deer. After that, I had to scrub the master bathroom and sand the stack of papers.
I walked twenty-seven blocks through ice storms and periods of warm weather to get to school every morning, wearing only an apron and a corsage. We had to learn physics and oceanography, all in the space of eighteen eternities.
Mom worked hard, making cardboard tubes of glue by hand and selling them for only twenty-one yuans each. She had to blame every tube of glue twenty-six times.
Dad worked as a construction worker and earned only forty-seven francs a day. We couldn't afford any decks of cards, so we made do with only a Lego set.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up idiotic and muscular.