You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a polished church in Ivory Coast.
We ate nothing but bonbons and Swiss cheese and we drank Tom Collins, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on alternate blue moons we had lime sherbet. I slept on a bookshelf in the corridor. My five sisters slept in the master bathroom.
I had to get up every morning at six to feed the beaver and the polar bear. After that, I had to scrub the billiard room and develop the rubber chicken.
I walked thirty blocks through drought and rainbows to get to school every morning, wearing only a tuxedo and a suit. We had to learn Spanish and programming, all in the space of twenty hours.
Mom worked hard, making prickly clothespins by hand and selling them for only twenty million dollars each. She had to dispose of every clothespin five times.
Dad worked as a lifeguard and earned only thirty-eight pounds a day. We couldn't afford any mushrooms, so we made do with only a wrench.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up vivacious and rude.