You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in an odd Cape Cod in Kalamazoo.
We ate nothing but egg salad sandwich and egg salad sandwich and we drank Alka-Seltzers, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Mondays we had chocolate-covered ants. I slept on a cupboard in the boiler room. My seven brothers slept in the laundry room.
I had to get up every morning at nine to feed the nightingale and the worm. After that, I had to scrub the bathroom and submerse the stamp.
I walked twenty-six furlongs through snowstorms and earthquakes to get to school every morning, wearing only a wedding dress and a surgical mask. We had to learn classics and architecture, all in the space of seven years.
Mom worked hard, making slimy cans of soup by hand and selling them for only fifteen nickels each. She had to disguise every can of soup nineteen times.
Dad worked as an X-ray technician and earned only four pounds a day. We couldn't afford any pizzas, so we made do with only a doily.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up peculiar and wizened.