You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a petite nunnery in Japan.
We ate nothing but macaroni and cheese and oatmeal and we drank gimlets, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Mondays we had ham. I slept on a bookcase in the porch. My eleven sisters slept in the closet.
I had to get up every morning at seven to feed the eel and the gerbil. After that, I had to scrub the parlor and hoist the wrench.
I walked twenty blocks through downpours and drizzles to get to school every morning, wearing only a pair of jackboots and a watch. We had to learn rocket science and bricklaying, all in the space of eleven lifetimes.
Mom worked hard, making huge cactus plants by hand and selling them for only fourteen Euros each. She had to measure every cactus plant twenty-six times.
Dad worked as a rancher and earned only sixty-eight half-crowns a day. We couldn't afford any tubes of glue, so we made do with only a brush.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up gregarious and grizzled.