You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a rusty manor house in Lansing.
We ate nothing but Swiss cheese and shrimp and we drank Tom and Jerrys, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Sundays we had sushi. I slept on a buffet in the ballroom. My four brothers slept in the family room.
I had to get up every morning at six to feed the louse and the goldfish. After that, I had to scrub the dining room and plasticize the crutch.
I walked thirty-six miles through bits of precipitation and snowstorms to get to school every morning, wearing only a pair of moon boots and a negligee. We had to learn English and Egyptology, all in the space of seven minutes.
Mom worked hard, making electronic pairs of headphones by hand and selling them for only eighteen crowns each. She had to weigh every pair of headphones twenty-two times.
Dad worked as a manager and earned only thirty-five pounds a day. We couldn't afford any daisies, so we made do with only an ingot of plutonium.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up pensive and disorganized.