Poverty doesn't give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor.

So poor and small and weak, I picked up Oscar. He licked my face because he loved and trusted me. And I carried him out to the lawn, and I laid him down beneath our green apple tree.

"I love you, Oscar," I said.

He looked at me and I swear to you that he understood what was happening. He knew what Dad was going to do. But Oscar wasn't scared. He was relieved.

But not me.

I ran away from there as fast as I could. I wanted to run faster than the speed of sound, but nobody, no matter how much pain they're in, can run that fast.

So I heard the boom of my father's rifle when he shot my best friend.

A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.