You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a bronze trailer in Corpus Christi.
We ate nothing but crab rangoon and jambalaya and we drank cups of hot cider, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Mondays we had hot dogs. I slept on a filing cabinet in the conservatory. My twelve brothers slept in the bedroom.
I had to get up every morning at seven to feed the goblin and the banana slug. After that, I had to scrub the kitchen and unwrap the ping-pong paddle.
I walked fifteen centimeters through drought and ice storms to get to school every morning, wearing only an earring and a pair of jackboots. We had to learn theology and ciphering, all in the space of fifteen months.
Mom worked hard, making fabulous boomerangs by hand and selling them for only five crowns each. She had to neglect every boomerang twenty-one times.
Dad worked as an air traffic controller and earned only thirty-nine Euros a day. We couldn't afford any bones, so we made do with only a magnet.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up friendly and shifty.