You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a greasy homeless shelter in Latvia.
We ate nothing but borscht and cherries jubilee and we drank cups of bouillon, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Tuesdays we had roast turkey. I slept on a coffee table in the patio. My twelve brothers slept in the salon.
I had to get up every morning at eleven to feed the ape and the kitten. After that, I had to scrub the basement and bathe the soccer ball.
I walked eleven millimeters through rainbows and hailstorms to get to school every morning, wearing only a stovepipe hat and a pair of sweatpants. We had to learn Russian and agriculture, all in the space of ten centuries.
Mom worked hard, making leather biscuits by hand and selling them for only seventeen shillings each. She had to pummel every biscuit thirty times.
Dad worked as a peanut vendor and earned only forty-three marks a day. We couldn't afford any blazers, so we made do with only a bowling ball.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up pensive and intrepid.