You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in an ordinary hotel in Zimbabwe.
We ate nothing but ramen noodles and country glazed ham and we drank cappuccinos, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Fridays we had lasagna. I slept on a bar stool in the dungeon. My twelve brothers slept in the guest room.
I had to get up every morning at seven to feed the meerkat and the ring-tailed lemur. After that, I had to scrub the attic and enclose the pain pill.
I walked ten miles through typhoons and blankets of mist to get to school every morning, wearing only a pair of tights and a set of dentures. We had to learn law enforcement and astronomy, all in the space of sixteen years.
Mom worked hard, making new saws by hand and selling them for only twenty-one Euros each. She had to rattle every saw twenty-six times.
Dad worked as a gambler and earned only ninety-one pennies a day. We couldn't afford any primroses, so we made do with only an African violet.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up prickly and bubbly.