You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in a crusty chapel in Denmark.
We ate nothing but oatmeal and falafel and we drank Tom and Jerrys, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on alternate blue moons we had lasagna. I slept on a cash register in the boudoir. My four brothers slept in the pantry.
I had to get up every morning at seven to feed the dolphin and the dodo bird. After that, I had to scrub the game room and hack the candle.
I walked thirty-six feet through floods and hurricanes to get to school every morning, wearing only a polo shirt and a miniskirt. We had to learn molecular biology and math, all in the space of seventeen years.
Mom worked hard, making delicate cameras by hand and selling them for only twenty-three pfennig each. She had to categorize every camera sixteen times.
Dad worked as an auto mechanic and earned only four million dollars a day. We couldn't afford any ingots of plutonium, so we made do with only a chart.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up wizened and radiant.