You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a cotton KOA Kampground in Alaska.
We ate nothing but pretzels and pumpkin pie and we drank shots of whiskey, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Saturdays we had ravioli. I slept on a card table in the guest room. My eleven brothers slept in the parlor.
I had to get up every morning at four to feed the anteater and the Chihuahua. After that, I had to scrub the corridor and grasp the pair of knitting needles.
I walked twenty-one kilometers through drizzles and snowstorms to get to school every morning, wearing only a pair of booties and a nose ring. We had to learn astrophysics and ABCs, all in the space of one month.
Mom worked hard, making big cookies by hand and selling them for only seven farthings each. She had to unbutton every cookie twenty-five times.
Dad worked as a shoe repairer and earned only twenty-five stock options a day. We couldn't afford any bird baths, so we made do with only a saw.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up naïve and vacuous.