You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a hand-painted church in Louisiana.
We ate nothing but chocolate-covered ants and lobster bisque and we drank Jack Daniel's, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on alternate blue moons we had pumpkin pie. I slept on a china cabinet in the nursery. My four brothers slept in the atrium.
I had to get up every morning at six to feed the caribou and the tsetse fly. After that, I had to scrub the cage and sharpen the microphone.
I walked forty blocks through typhoons and drizzles to get to school every morning, wearing only a pair of knickerbockers and an overcoat. We had to learn carpentry and veterinary medicine, all in the space of one year.
Mom worked hard, making striking yardsticks by hand and selling them for only twenty-two food stamps each. She had to decontaminate every yardstick sixteen times.
Dad worked as a hobo and earned only fifteen yuans a day. We couldn't afford any microphones, so we made do with only a model airplane.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up pesky and fuzzy.