You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a speckled house in Zanzibar.
We ate nothing but oyster on the half-shell and crumb cake and we drank glasses of champagne, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Fridays we had candy. I slept on a sofa in the boudoir. My seven sisters slept in the basement.
I had to get up every morning at seven to feed the moose and the android. After that, I had to scrub the hall and shake the stopwatch.
I walked twenty-seven hops through blizzards and periods of warm weather to get to school every morning, wearing only a locket and a skeleton costume. We had to learn accounting and potty training, all in the space of three lifetimes.
Mom worked hard, making hand-made piggy banks by hand and selling them for only twenty-one shillings each. She had to hook every piggy bank twenty-two times.
Dad worked as a marine biologist and earned only nineteen Euros a day. We couldn't afford any napkins, so we made do with only a hacksaw.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up shiftless and difficult.