Woe, dispair and agony on me

Kansas City's Best Blogger Meesha V. has challenged readers to a Hardship-Off at his blog.

I was in the process of responding, letting everyone know how difficult it was to be me growing up, when my comment just became too long. So I decided to post it here for the sake of not uglifying his comments section too much.

Read it if you want, but be warned. It's a sad, sad story and those with fragile mental states should probably steer clear.

But if you do proceed, you should know that Meesha and his commenters were lamenting the primitive plumbing they had do deal with growing up.

Well, that's nothing. When I was growing up I had to share the top floor of our house with my brother. HE got the bigger room, and we had to share the bathroom. Get this, the bathroom didn't even have a bathtub. Just a shower. And the shower didn't even have a variable massage shower head.

And, I didn't even have a TV in my bedroom. We all had to share the 40-inch television in the family room in the west wing of our house. I remember one summer the remote control broke and my dad didn't want to buy a new one, so whenever we wanted to watch a different program, we had to get up and WALK to the TV to change the channel.

I know. But it gets worse. When I was in junior high our Olympic-size heated swimming pool developed a crack and half of the water drained out. It was a mess, and we ended up having to drain the whole thing to have it patched. We essentially lost the use of the pool for half the summer. The horror.

Then there was the time when I was in high school and I had to drive a hand-me-down two-year-old BMW while all my friends were driving Lexuses and Mercedeses. I was humiliated every time I parked in the covered parking garage at my high school.

Well, there's more, but I can sense how depressed you are all getting. I doubt any of you can come up with sadder stories, but if you dare, leave it in the comments at Meesha's place.

tagged: hardship, humor, Lexus, BMW, Mercedes, swimming pool