You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in an odd church in Rio.
We ate nothing but ceviche and cherries jubilee and we drank V8s, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Sundays we had shrimp. I slept on a hammock in the cage. My eight brothers slept in the bathroom.
I had to get up every morning at four to feed the snipe and the leopard. After that, I had to scrub the lounge and scuff the bone.
I walked thirty-two furlongs through drought and thunderstorms to get to school every morning, wearing only a shirt and a bustier. We had to learn deportment and geography, all in the space of eight blinks of an eye.
Mom worked hard, making soft stacks of papers by hand and selling them for only fourteen ha'pennies each. She had to slap every stack of papers twelve times.
Dad worked as an actor and earned only fifty-five pfennig a day. We couldn't afford any model airplanes, so we made do with only a whistle.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up difficult and pesky.