You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a mechanical farmhouse in Thailand.
We ate nothing but roast turkey and cotton candy and we drank double lattes, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Fridays we had crab rangoon. I slept on a fainting couch in the master bedroom. My nine brothers slept in the lounge.
I had to get up every morning at six to feed the mouse and the spider. After that, I had to scrub the family room and handle the billiard ball.
I walked twenty-seven furlongs through driving rainstorms and dust storms to get to school every morning, wearing only a jerkin and a bicycle helmet. We had to learn plumbing and psychology, all in the space of two weeks.
Mom worked hard, making gruesome daisies by hand and selling them for only three pesos each. She had to expose every daisy ten times.
Dad worked as an acrobat and earned only twenty-one farthings a day. We couldn't afford any batteries, so we made do with only a hockey puck.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up generous and diabolical.