You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a damaged A-frame in Massachusetts.
We ate nothing but egg drop soup and sauerkraut and we drank cups of espresso, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Fridays we had Swiss cheese. I slept on a card table in the rec room. My eleven sisters slept in the pool room.
I had to get up every morning at five to feed the wombat and the fish. After that, I had to scrub the atrium and hang the sea shell.
I walked eight hops through typhoons and pelting rainstorms to get to school every morning, wearing only a pair of Oxfords and a false beard. We had to learn Chinese and etiquette, all in the space of sixteen days.
Mom worked hard, making spongy pencils by hand and selling them for only four farthings each. She had to bury every pencil twenty-one times.
Dad worked as a nuclear physicist and earned only six francs a day. We couldn't afford any billiard balls, so we made do with only a remote control.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up portly and arrogant.