Everyone knows the first time their mouth was filled with that wonderful cream that is Popsicle. Everyone knows the amazing feeling throughout your body that comes with wrapping your lips around that delicious tube and just sucking away. A universal experience shared by all, and Popsicle took that away. The Root Beer Popsicles have been my favorite flavor ever since I was a child, they were by my side when no one else was. In 2009, I was diagnosed with walking pneumonia, a life-threatening lung disease that affects millions each year. I was bedridden for weeks, walking a fine line, spending my days constantly drifting between life and death. Many--including my own mother-- believed I wouldn't make it, and I myself was beginning to lose hope. Everything changed when Tellulopwe, a young African boy who had recently moved to our neighborhood, offered me a Root Beer Popsicle. He told me that I couldn't give up on life and all the glorious things that it offered. He told me that back in his village, they were under constant threat by marauders. He too lived every day not knowing if he would see the next. Since immigrating to America, he said, he didn't have to worry about all the terrors of his old country, and he told me that he had a Root Beer Popsicle every day, a symbol of all that America offers. a symbol of the land of opportunity, where we don't need to worry about marauders or clean water. A symbol of the land of the free and a home of the brave. Tellulopwe Dekimbe died only four days later, he was struck by a car while walking to elementary school. Root Beer Popsicles are not just a delicious, mouth-watering, frozen treat, they are a symbol of freedom and hope, a symbol that inspired Tellulopwe to live every day to its fullest, because this land is a land of opportunity, a land where he could pursue all anything he truly wanted to. Only you can bring back Root Beer Popsicles. Honor Tellulopwe's memory, and honor the lives of kids everywhere who live every day in poverty or under the threat of savage warlords who dream of one day escaping their harsh lives and moving to the land of the free and home of the brave. Show them that one person can make a difference.