You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a rough Spanish colonial in Morocco.
We ate nothing but macaroni and cheese and dirty rice and we drank shots of whiskey, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Thursdays we had biscuits and gravy. I slept on a desk in the ballroom. My eleven brothers slept in the hall.
I had to get up every morning at six to feed the nightingale and the prairie dog. After that, I had to scrub the master bathroom and exclude the statue.
I walked twenty miles through downpours and humid days to get to school every morning, wearing only a pair of moon boots and a beard. We had to learn social studies and civics, all in the space of five years.
Mom worked hard, making torn buckets by hand and selling them for only eighteen pennies each. She had to manage every bucket thirty times.
Dad worked as an interpreter and earned only thirty-three Euros a day. We couldn't afford any paper airplanes, so we made do with only a deck of cards.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up rude and grizzled.