You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a slimy convent in St. Petersburg.
We ate nothing but potatoes and gravy and Froot Loops and we drank secret potions, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on alternate blue moons we had banana split. I slept on a chest of drawers in the foyer. My seven brothers slept in the ballroom.
I had to get up every morning at six to feed the buffalo and the pony. After that, I had to scrub the doghouse and package the bag.
I walked twenty-nine kilometers through downpours and hot, sunny days to get to school every morning, wearing only a pair of Bermuda shorts and a mask. We had to learn geneaology and scuba diving, all in the space of eleven hours.
Mom worked hard, making queer cardboard boxes by hand and selling them for only nineteen nickels each. She had to forget every cardboard box four times.
Dad worked as a village idiot and earned only eighty-one pounds a day. We couldn't afford any candles, so we made do with only a dulcimer.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up tactful and colorless.