You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a heavy Spanish colonial in Richmond.
We ate nothing but chicken soup and pizza and we drank chocolate milks, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Fridays we had smoked salmon. I slept on a floor in the foyer. My six brothers slept in the laundry room.
I had to get up every morning at five to feed the polar bear and the orangutan. After that, I had to scrub the boiler room and squash the photograph.
I walked eight kilometers through humid days and humid days to get to school every morning, wearing only a bathrobe and a pair of roller skates. We had to learn obedience and law enforcement, all in the space of six decades.
Mom worked hard, making crude bedpans by hand and selling them for only twenty-three ha'pennies each. She had to ruin every bedpan three times.
Dad worked as a math teacher and earned only ninety-two bitcoin a day. We couldn't afford any canes, so we made do with only a pink flamingo.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up mean and dismal.