Saturday, June 4, 2011

Border Guards

Being border hoppers I think all of us in the fam could share stories... there was the time I had so much luggage the lady looked at me like, 'you were really just gone a weekend?' There's Mom's theory about the gender and age of the border guard affecting how tough they are... there's the whole driving vs flying that Dad could attest to and the varying leniency... There was also the time Spence and I were coming up to be married and the border guard saw my wedding dress in it's garment bag and said, 'there are easier ways to smuggle people in, you know...' There was also the time David and I were encouraged to renew our Canadian Passports when the border guard checked us in and discovered we were both Canadian.

Anyway, I recently got my passport stamped again when i visited Canada for Patti & Aaron's wedding. It was a wonderful visit! Then it was time to head back.

Here's the dialogue upon my reentry when I cleared customs in Calgary... I thought it was a noteworthy one because the border guard actually cracked a few jokes!

‘Where do you live?’
‘Los Angeles’
‘Born a California Girl?’
‘No’
‘Where were you born?’
‘Portland’
‘Ah, and then just a little trip down the I-5 to where you live now,’
‘Yea, pretty much’ (for all intents and purposes we could just leave it at that.)
‘What’s your day job?’
‘I’m a teacher’
‘What do you teach?’
‘1st Grade’ (again, keep it simple)
‘Ah, Quantum Mechanics… Chemistry?’(not simple)
‘Getting there’
‘haha’
'haha' (yes, we actually had a laugh over it)

‘Got any fruit?’ ... and on it went. I guess I didnt look too suspicious - I passed and here I am!

1 comment:

Coleen said...

I always think its a coup when you can get the borer guard to laugh so good work Linds. I think we should all sit down and compare border crossing stories. I'm sure everyone has some good ones.