You think you've got it rough? You should have been around when I was a kid. Our whole family lived in an amazing igloo in Malta.
We ate nothing but potatoes and gravy and pancakes and we drank Cokes, and we were glad to have them. Sometimes on Tuesdays we had squash blossom soup. I slept on a hammock in the workshop. My eleven brothers slept in the auditorium.
I had to get up every morning at nine to feed the turtle and the duck-billed platypus. After that, I had to scrub the guest room and melt the box.
I walked twenty-three centimeters through thunderstorms and typhoons to get to school every morning, wearing only a pair of dentures and a pair of shorts. We had to learn theology and subtraction, all in the space of fourteen years.
Mom worked hard, making gigantic cream puffs by hand and selling them for only ten pesos each. She had to label every cream puff four times.
Dad worked as a diplomat and earned only fifty-six stock options a day. We couldn't afford any flash drives, so we made do with only a paper airplane.
In spite of all the hardships, we grew up ladylike and spindly.