You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a porcelain log cabin in Lesotho.
We ate nothing but pumpkin pie and mulligan stew and we drank glasses of buttermilk, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Sundays we had moo goo gai pan. I slept on a filing cabinet in the lounge. My eleven sisters slept in the ballroom.
I had to get up every morning at eleven to feed the jackal and the garter snake. After that, I had to scrub the atrium and control the fork.
I walked twenty-two centimeters through hailstorms and rainbows to get to school every morning, wearing only a bowler hat and a shirt. We had to learn astronomy and oceanography, all in the space of one century.
Mom worked hard, making rusty model airplanes by hand and selling them for only fifteen pounds each. She had to condemn every model airplane fourteen times.
Dad worked as a nun and earned only eighteen food stamps a day. We couldn't afford any boxes, so we made do with only a fish bowl.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up quiet and affable.