Castro...Can You Hear Me NOW?

Nobody’s Opinion: In Miami tonight…on the sidewalks, on the beach, while the sun goes down, millions of Cubans are sweating profusely in their sarongs and panama hats, almost withering in pain while waiting for the news…Is he dead yet?

Castro, it is reported…could be dead. So could bin Laden for that matter…but right now, in Miami, millions of Cubans are keeping the cell phones on, waiting to make that call to relatives so far away:

“Can you hear me now?”

So…when are they going to announce it? Chavez no doubt, will come out and claim that Castro gave him Cuba to rule. Castro knows a good “yes” man when he meets one. Look how long he kept the bearded guy on all the T-shirts around.

Hugo Chavez will no doubt make a special trip to the UN just to announce, once again, that “Fidel Castro will never die!” and most of the room along with Sean Penn and Michael Moore, will break out in applause. Can you see Raul, Castro’s brother doing it? Let’s face it---Raul has the personality of a limp potato.

Chavez is almost a shoe-in to be the new Cuban dictator…after all; he gave Castro a bedside phone just to keep in touch.

This news got me thinking tonight and about my favorite Cuban--Oscar Gonzales.

Oscar Gonzales was in my 6th grade class in Naples, Florida, back during the first Spanish Invasion…back around the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Back when I came home from school one day and found my father digging a hole in the back yard, which he told me that he intended to fill it with pork and beans. (More about that later)

Oscar Gonzales was from Cuba. And Oscar, like many Cubans who came to America to flee Castro…had a very strong sense of justice.

Yes, Oscar, my hero, stood up to the class bully, to protect the class damsel in distress, which was--- me. The guy’s name was Scott Black, and he was built like a Norwegian Bull Moose with all of the gas to go with it.

Every day I came home with huge black and blue marks from where Scott would “frog” my shoulder. I suppose, looking back, it was Scott’s pubertal way of getting my attention. But, every time Scott would hit me, Oscar would get on him.

Then one day, Oscar could take it no more. The teacher, who had left the room for some reason, did not witness the fight. Oscar dove into Scott with such ferocity that all the desks were pretty much destroyed. And it wasn’t skinny Oscar that came out the loser. A bully had been tamed.

Back then, the teachers seemed much brighter. The politically correct system that we have today was not in place. When all the kids told the teacher exactly what happened, Scott was expelled, not Oscar, which was the right thing to do.

Today, Oscar would have been expelled for fighting the class bully.

Oscar and I went on to become great friends. Oscar loved America, and he and the other Cuban in our grade school, Patricia, made top grades and spook great English…and they both learned it in a year.

The teachers praised their hard work, and reminded the other students how Oscar and Patricia had to work to not only learn our language, but to master all the subjects.

Every kid in the school was so very proud of them. I mean it. We loved those kids.

But now, we face a second invasion, from a people who run here to make money. Not for “freedom,” and not to learn the language or be an American. Sadly, some of them see no injustice in committing crimes, taking free welfare, and almost becoming bullies themselves to the Americans who live here, as if we owe them a living.

Nobody has talked much about the difference in the two “invasions.” The Cuban and the Mexican.

But I bet if Oscar Gonzales was here…he would say: “Stop it…or else.”

Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to Oscar. Not only did he draw me beautiful pictures that I still have to this day, he taught me that one should always stand up to a bully, something that it seems many "progressive" Americans have forgotten.

It would be so nice to call up Oscar…who is probably somewhere in Florida, maybe sitting with his parents who fled so long ago from the horrors of the bully of Havana...

Call him up and say...”Hey Oscar…can you hear me?”

“Thanks.”

As for my dad….he didn’t get far with his bomb shelter. I’m not sure if it was the water he hit at six feet, or the fact that being stooped up with my 14-year-old brother for three weeks with nothing to eat but pork and beans was a thought too much to bear for his younger sister. Dad probably thought he’d take his chances with Castro.