You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a gross skyscraper in Sudan.
We ate nothing but borscht and cabbage and we drank tequila sunrises, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Sundays we had lobster. I slept on a dishwasher in the boudoir. My eight sisters slept in the bathroom.
I had to get up every morning at twelve to feed the mustang and the snake. After that, I had to scrub the workshop and watch the dead otter.
I walked twenty-one blocks through pelting rainstorms and bits of precipitation to get to school every morning, wearing only a bathrobe and a towel. We had to learn drama and evolutionary biology, all in the space of seven fortnights.
Mom worked hard, making flexible corncobs by hand and selling them for only eight dollars each. She had to bleach every corncob thirteen times.
Dad worked as a school principal and earned only nineteen marks a day. We couldn't afford any packs of gum, so we made do with only a book.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up yappy and enthusiastic.