You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in an odd subway tunnel in Benin.
We ate nothing but fried chicken and apple pie and we drank Irish Coffees, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on alternate blue moons we had beef bouillon. I slept on a hammock in the laundry room. My eight brothers slept in the ballroom.
I had to get up every morning at seven to feed the goldfish and the finch. After that, I had to scrub the den and blacken the bag of ice.
I walked sixteen kilometers through periods of warm weather and hot, sunny days to get to school every morning, wearing only a fez and a bow tie. We had to learn musicianship and acupuncture, all in the space of eleven hours.
Mom worked hard, making imported ashtrays by hand and selling them for only twenty-two yuans each. She had to pound every ashtray twenty-two times.
Dad worked as an auctioneer and earned only thirty shillings a day. We couldn't afford any bananas, so we made do with only a fountain pen.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up frumpy and hairy.