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I'm five years old, and I am very proud.
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My father has just built the best outhouse
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in our little village in Ukraine.
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Inside, it's a smelly, gaping hole in the ground,
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but outside, it's pearly white formica
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and it literally gleams in the sun.
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This makes me feel so proud, so important,
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that I appoint myself the leader of my little group of friends
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and I devise missions for us.
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So we prowl from house to house
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looking for flies captured in spider webs
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and we set them free.
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Four years earlier, when I was one,
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after the Chernobyl accident,
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the rain came down black,
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and my sister's hair fell out in clumps,
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and I spent nine months in the hospital.
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There were no visitors allowed,
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so my mother bribed a hospital worker.
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She acquired a nurse's uniform,
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and she snuck in every night to sit by my side.
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Five years later, an unexpected silver lining.
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Thanks to Chernobyl, we get asylum in the U.S.
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I am six years old, and I don't cry when we leave home
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and we come to America,
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because I expect it to be a place filled with rare
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and wonderful things like bananas and chocolate
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and Bazooka bubble gum,
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Bazooka bubble gum with the little cartoon wrappers inside,
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Bazooka that we'd get once a year in Ukraine
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and we'd have to chew one piece for an entire week.
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So the first day we get to New York,
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my grandmother and I find a penny
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in the floor of the homeless shelter that my family's staying in.
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Only, we don't know that it's a homeless shelter.
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We think that it's a hotel, a hotel with lots of rats.
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So we find this penny kind of fossilized in the floor,
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and we think that a very wealthy man must have left it there
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because regular people don't just lose money.
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And I hold this penny in the palm of my hand,
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and it's sticky and rusty,
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but it feels like I'm holding a fortune.
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I decide that I'm going to get my very own piece
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of Bazooka bubble gum.
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And in that moment, I feel like a millionaire.
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About a year later, I get to feel that way again
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when we find a bag full of stuffed animals in the trash,
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and suddenly I have more toys
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than I've ever had in my whole life.
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And again, I get that feeling when we get a knock
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on the door of our apartment in Brooklyn,
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and my sister and I find a deliveryman
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with a box of pizza that we didn't order.
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So we take the pizza, our very first pizza,
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and we devour slice after slice
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as the deliveryman stands there and stares at us from the doorway.
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And he tells us to pay, but we don't speak English.
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My mother comes out, and he asks her for money,
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but she doesn't have enough.
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She walks 50 blocks to and from work every day
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just to avoid spending money on bus fare.
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Then our neighbor pops her head in,
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and she turns red with rage when she realizes
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that those immigrants from downstairs
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have somehow gotten their hands on her pizza.
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Everyone's upset.
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But the pizza is delicious.
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It doesn't hit me until years later just how little we had.
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On our 10 year anniversary of being in the U.S.,
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we decided to celebrate by reserving a room
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at the hotel that we first stayed in when we got to the U.S.
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The man at the front desk laughs, and he says,
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"You can't reserve a room here. This is a homeless shelter."
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And we were shocked.
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My husband Brian was also homeless as a kid.
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His family lost everything, and at age 11,
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he had to live in motels with his dad,
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motels that would round up all of their food
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and keep it hostage until they were able to pay the bill.
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And one time, when he finally got his box
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of Frosted Flakes back, it was crawling with roaches.
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But he did have one thing.
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He had this shoebox that he carried with him everywhere
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containing nine comic books,
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two G.I. Joes painted to look like Spider-Man,
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and five Gobots. And this was his treasure.
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This was his own assembly of heroes
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that kept him from drugs and gangs
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and from giving up on his dreams.
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I'm going to tell you about one more
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formerly homeless member of our family.
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This is Scarlett.
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Once upon a time, Scarlet was used as bait in dog fights.
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She was tied up and thrown into the ring
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for other dogs to attack so they'd get more aggressive before the fight.
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And now, these days, she eats organic food
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and she sleeps on an orthopedic bed with her name on it,
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but when we pour water for her in her bowl,
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she still looks up and she wags her tail in gratitude.
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Sometimes Brian and I walk through the park with Scarlett,
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and she rolls through the grass,
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and we just look at her
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and then we look at each other
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and we feel gratitude.
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We forget about all of our new middle-class frustrations
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and disappointments,
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and we feel like millionaires.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)