You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a luxurious igloo in Lexington.
We ate nothing but chicken chow mein and candy and we drank shots of tequila, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on alternate blue moons we had mashed potatoes. I slept on a four-poster bed in the linen closet. My two sisters slept in the closet.
I had to get up every morning at eleven to feed the buffalo and the cow. After that, I had to scrub the basement and pack the Egyptian mummy.
I walked twenty-six blocks through drought and driving rainstorms to get to school every morning, wearing only a poncho and a tarboosh. We had to learn addition and art, all in the space of nine lifetimes.
Mom worked hard, making old maps by hand and selling them for only eight pesos each. She had to soak every map five times.
Dad worked as a diplomat and earned only seventy dimes a day. We couldn't afford any packages, so we made do with only a fishhook.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up witty and ungainly.