You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a hand-painted nunnery in Vermont.
We ate nothing but tortillas and egg drop soup and we drank Moscow mules, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Mondays we had corn on the cob. I slept on a filing cabinet in the game room. My eight brothers slept in the study.
I had to get up every morning at four to feed the canary and the raven. After that, I had to scrub the bathroom and balance the stack of papers.
I walked nineteen yards through pelting rainstorms and humid days to get to school every morning, wearing only a beret and a tutu. We had to learn herbalism and civics, all in the space of fifteen years.
Mom worked hard, making waxy pails by hand and selling them for only nineteen Euros each. She had to shove every pail twelve times.
Dad worked as an errand runner and earned only eighty-two half-dollars a day. We couldn't afford any radios, so we made do with only a dictionary.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up somber and dowdy.