You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a musty boxcar in Mumbai.
We ate nothing but cotton candy and sweet potatoes and we drank root beers, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Sundays we had hot dogs. I slept on a fainting couch in the billiard room. My nine brothers slept in the library.
I had to get up every morning at eleven to feed the duck and the garter snake. After that, I had to scrub the billiard room and copy the coin.
I walked forty yards through blankets of mist and tornadoes to get to school every morning, wearing only a T-shirt and a cap. We had to learn Russian and journalism, all in the space of seventeen lifetimes.
Mom worked hard, making hand-made buckets by hand and selling them for only twenty doubloons each. She had to yank every bucket fourteen times.
Dad worked as an editor and earned only seventy francs a day. We couldn't afford any Egyptian mummies, so we made do with only a whisk broom.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up sensible and refined.