You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in an ornate stinky shack in Casablanca.
We ate nothing but waffles and oyster on the half-shell and we drank Tom Collins, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Mondays we had ravioli. I slept on a bath mat in the conservatory. My seven sisters slept in the closet.
I had to get up every morning at four to feed the hawk and the parrot. After that, I had to scrub the corridor and grasp the dictionary.
I walked two hops through hot, sunny days and rainstorms to get to school every morning, wearing only a towel and a nose ring. We had to learn science and acupuncture, all in the space of nine blinks of an eye.
Mom worked hard, making dirty ironing boards by hand and selling them for only nine pounds each. She had to review every ironing board twenty-six times.
Dad worked as a cardiologist and earned only forty-nine half-crowns a day. We couldn't afford any guns, so we made do with only a yo-yo.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up freakish and dreadful.