Now Buckwheat, please use the word 'dictate' in a sentence.

It had been years since I walked into that Army-Navy store out in Port Jervis. When I was a kid my old man and I used to stop in there whenever we were in the vicinity on a fishing trip to the Delaware River. He'd buy me some random piece of seemingly useless yet undeniably cool military surplus to add to my collection: a backpack or camouflage clothing or a trench shovel or a gas mask or a dud grenade, thus making my backyard Rambo fantasy sessions all the more real, and making him the hero once again. It became harder for him to be the man I needed as years went on, but that's another story.

So there I was two weeks ago, perusing through that same olive drab green merchandise a decade-and-a-half later. My wool coat, tongue-in-cheek thrift store T-shirt, tight Levi's and running sneakers made me stick out like a sore thumb. The thick beard I've been growing out didn't help the situation any, the Taliban look not being popular amongst God-fearing gun-toting good ol' boys from them there parts. Employees were sizing me up from the minute I walked through the door and I felt their eyes burning holes through my back as I thumbed through bins of stuff that would've gotten me excited as a kid and still had a nostalgic effect on me somehow. Finally, one of the burly ex-Marine (wait, there's no such thing) behind the counter manned up and asked the question they'd all been dying to hear answered: "Can I help you with something?" I quickly flipped through the rack of BDU shirts in front of me until I found a plain green one, held it up and asked if they had any in the back in a larger size. "No, we only carry them in sizes not made for real people unfortunately. Anything else would be special order, I could have it hear in a few weeks." He must've seen my spirits drop due to that last bit of information, considered the dense beard I had and put two and two together. "Let me guess-- you're going to be Fidel Castro for Halloween." My face lit up at his recognition of my intentions since it meant I'd chosen wisely. If this country bumpkin got it then my far more cultured friends and colleagues would for sure. I told him I had the right hat, pants, boots, and cigar to wear to my friend's party. He reassured me that those items would be enough to pull it off and that I wouldn't be mistaken for Papa Smurf. I laughed and told him that I had an OD green jacket from ten years ago, but wanted a shirt in case the coat got too hot to wear. We shrugged our shoulders simultaneously and went back about our respective businesses. I got a pair of WWII-style large-lens mirrored aviators and drove the forty minutes back home.

The costume went over well. I was pleased with the laughs I got out of it. One girl called her grandmother to tell her about it because apparently the old lady has had a crush on him ever since his coup in Cuba in the middle of the last century. If only my boy Fidel could have been there that night to see me do him justice, stroking the beard and biting the thick stoagie while refraining from trying to mimic the accent since I knew I wouldn't be able to pull it off consistently, especially as the alcohol set in. Somewhere on his island he was laying in that deathbed of his that he's been in for awhile now, rolling around on bed sores and cursing his failure to go out still standing. That's not to say that I feel bad for the guy. I heard recently on a radio talk show that in some form of autobiographical work the former Communist dictator claimed to have slept with 70,000 women in his lifetime. That's way more than basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain's impressive 20,000. That's probably a decent chunk of the Cuban female population. Did he have secret police who raided bars just before last call to round up unsuspecting women? I don't care how much game a man can spit, those kinds of numbers require some form of forceful tactic; roofies and duct tape, the Horny Gestapo, mail-order brides paid for by the national economy, something. And you also can't convince me that he would confess to sleeping with most of those women to his friends. With those numbers there's just no feasible way that the majority of them were attractive enough to brag about the next day at the bar. "Si, hombre. Me and that fox Marrrria really heet eet off last nah-eet." Chances are he kept most of the truth to himself. Quantity over quality, which may or may not have went along with his fiscal-political stance. Either way, pimps up/hoes down. Fiddy, this Bud's for you.