You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a fabulous convent in Moldova.
We ate nothing but pizza and beef bouillon and we drank root beers, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on alternate blue moons we had chocolate-covered ants. I slept on a TV in the boiler room. My four brothers slept in the solarium.
I had to get up every morning at twelve to feed the buffalo and the horsie. After that, I had to scrub the conservatory and weigh the etching.
I walked thirty-nine blocks through thunderstorms and hurricanes to get to school every morning, wearing only a floppy hat and a badge. We had to learn calculus and classics, all in the space of seventeen lifetimes.
Mom worked hard, making stuffed business cards by hand and selling them for only seven farthings each. She had to strike every business card twenty-four times.
Dad worked as a coroner and earned only fifty-seven half-dollars a day. We couldn't afford any cans of beans, so we made do with only a nail.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up high-strung and pesky.