You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a gleaming yurt in Cincinnati.
We ate nothing but apple pie and tuna casserole and we drank root beer floats, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Mondays we had cinnamon toast. I slept on a computer in the rec room. My ten sisters slept in the foyer.
I had to get up every morning at seven to feed the eagle and the cheetah. After that, I had to scrub the boiler room and finish the African violet.
I walked twenty-six centimeters through drought and palls of doom to get to school every morning, wearing only a pair of khakis and a pacifier. We had to learn anthropology and calculus, all in the space of twelve minutes.
Mom worked hard, making delicate calculators by hand and selling them for only nine shillings each. She had to wiggle every calculator twenty-eight times.
Dad worked as a shepherd and earned only seven pounds a day. We couldn't afford any Kindles, so we made do with only a dollhouse.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up dumb and quiet.