crossing borders
"Hi, my name is Cris and the story that I'm going to tell is about a road trip that I took thirteen years ago. I was twenty-four, a couple of years out of college, in that point of time in one's life where you're making friends, meeting new people, forming the surrogate family that you've chosen. That summer, a few friends of mine and I decided it would be fun to go to Toronto for a music convention, and I should say that I'm Canadian, and so I was particularly keen on introducing my friends to Canada's wonderful humor, politeness and hospitality.
"So, it was that a bunch of us got in my car early on a Friday morning for the ten hour drive to Toronto. It was my girlfriend-at-the-time, Bridget, her roommate, Ann, and our friends Michael (W.) and Raul. We drove non-stop until we crossed into New York and stopped for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel, then kept driving until Buffalo. We didn't quite understand how much time we spent in the car until we were walking in this mall in Buffalo and we realized that we were walking in the exact same formation as we had been sitting in the car.
"After Buffalo, we crossed the border into Canada, and as we entered the checkpoint the border guard asked us for our passports, then looked in the car, looked at me and asked, 'sir, can you pull over and wait for me to come by.'
"He came up after we parked and said, 'Sir, I noticed that your friend over there is wearing an Opium Den t-shirt. Do you know what opium is?'
"I said I did and said that the shirt was for a local Boston band. He nodded and said, 'well, sir, that might indicate a proclivity for narcotics. We'll have to search your car. I should inform you, sir, that if we find any evidence of drugs in your car, we are authorised to strip your car down to search for all of your drugs, and we're under no obligation to put it back together again. If you have drugs in your car, sir, now's the time to tell us.'
"'We do not have any drugs,' I said, 'you are welcome to search, but you won't find anything because there's nothing there.
"'If you say so, sir. All of you, please sit inside.
"So, we shuffled into this border post and sat down as they pulled this Law & Order interrogation thing on us. Asked us to go into separate rooms and grilled us on why we were going to Canada, what we had in the car, and how we knew each other. They asked Raul to take his shirt off because apparently he had the same name as some international criminal and they needed to check him for some identifying scars. Michael asked to go to the bathroom and they told him no. Then, they told Bridget that they found some kind of knife with a seed resin on the car that might be hashish. She said she didn't know anything about that, but for a brief moment realized that I had been fairly generous with giving people rides and it was always possible that someone left something in my trunk.
"Still, they couldn't find anything, and eventually they let us go, and we made our way to Toronto. Raul felt a little put upon for being accused of being a criminal, but his outrage faded after discovering that our motel room had free porn channels.
"Our time in Toronto was fun. We went out, saw the city, watched a bunch of concerts and had an overall excellent time. And when it was time to go back, we piled back into my car and went into the American side of the border.
"Which is when I realized that I had an expired passport. I also had a perfectly valid, freshly renewed passport, but I managed to leave that on my dresser back in Boston due to my rush for packing.
"So, the American border agent looks at my expired passport and then looks at me and asks, very pointedly, 'so, what am I supposed to do with this?'
"'Uhmm...' I said, 'let me through? Because -- a) this expired passport only expired last month and it shows here that I was granted a valid one-year visa two months ago and b) here's my business card and the phone number of my company and you can call them if you need to validate my employment and c) ...?
"I have four of your citizens in my car and I'm their ride back and it'd be awfully inconvenient for all of us if you kept me here.'
"and he looked at me sternly and said, 'don't ever do this again.' and let me through.
"The rest of the drive back was fairly uneventful. The trip had been long, and we were all a bit spent. We slept most of the way back, and eventually returned to Boston. When we dropped off Michael at his apartment in the Fenway, he turned, looked at us and said, 'this was a great trip. We should do this again next year ... I hope I don't see any of you until then.'
"And, you know, despite him saying that, we had become good friends and stayed good friends. It's been thirteen years, and we're all scattered, to New York, LA and Boston, but we will still see each other when we're in town, hang out and reinforce the bonds that we built that summer.
"I believe that friendships are sparked by a moment of human connection, but they are bonded by shared experience. And those may be jokes exchanged on a ten hour drive, drinks that you buy for each other in a foreign country or, in some cases, doing time together at a holding pen in no-man's land.
"Thank you, and good night."
"So, it was that a bunch of us got in my car early on a Friday morning for the ten hour drive to Toronto. It was my girlfriend-at-the-time, Bridget, her roommate, Ann, and our friends Michael (W.) and Raul. We drove non-stop until we crossed into New York and stopped for breakfast at a Cracker Barrel, then kept driving until Buffalo. We didn't quite understand how much time we spent in the car until we were walking in this mall in Buffalo and we realized that we were walking in the exact same formation as we had been sitting in the car.
"After Buffalo, we crossed the border into Canada, and as we entered the checkpoint the border guard asked us for our passports, then looked in the car, looked at me and asked, 'sir, can you pull over and wait for me to come by.'
"He came up after we parked and said, 'Sir, I noticed that your friend over there is wearing an Opium Den t-shirt. Do you know what opium is?'
"I said I did and said that the shirt was for a local Boston band. He nodded and said, 'well, sir, that might indicate a proclivity for narcotics. We'll have to search your car. I should inform you, sir, that if we find any evidence of drugs in your car, we are authorised to strip your car down to search for all of your drugs, and we're under no obligation to put it back together again. If you have drugs in your car, sir, now's the time to tell us.'
"'We do not have any drugs,' I said, 'you are welcome to search, but you won't find anything because there's nothing there.
"'If you say so, sir. All of you, please sit inside.
"So, we shuffled into this border post and sat down as they pulled this Law & Order interrogation thing on us. Asked us to go into separate rooms and grilled us on why we were going to Canada, what we had in the car, and how we knew each other. They asked Raul to take his shirt off because apparently he had the same name as some international criminal and they needed to check him for some identifying scars. Michael asked to go to the bathroom and they told him no. Then, they told Bridget that they found some kind of knife with a seed resin on the car that might be hashish. She said she didn't know anything about that, but for a brief moment realized that I had been fairly generous with giving people rides and it was always possible that someone left something in my trunk.
"Still, they couldn't find anything, and eventually they let us go, and we made our way to Toronto. Raul felt a little put upon for being accused of being a criminal, but his outrage faded after discovering that our motel room had free porn channels.
"Our time in Toronto was fun. We went out, saw the city, watched a bunch of concerts and had an overall excellent time. And when it was time to go back, we piled back into my car and went into the American side of the border.
"Which is when I realized that I had an expired passport. I also had a perfectly valid, freshly renewed passport, but I managed to leave that on my dresser back in Boston due to my rush for packing.
"So, the American border agent looks at my expired passport and then looks at me and asks, very pointedly, 'so, what am I supposed to do with this?'
"'Uhmm...' I said, 'let me through? Because -- a) this expired passport only expired last month and it shows here that I was granted a valid one-year visa two months ago and b) here's my business card and the phone number of my company and you can call them if you need to validate my employment and c) ...?
"I have four of your citizens in my car and I'm their ride back and it'd be awfully inconvenient for all of us if you kept me here.'
"and he looked at me sternly and said, 'don't ever do this again.' and let me through.
"The rest of the drive back was fairly uneventful. The trip had been long, and we were all a bit spent. We slept most of the way back, and eventually returned to Boston. When we dropped off Michael at his apartment in the Fenway, he turned, looked at us and said, 'this was a great trip. We should do this again next year ... I hope I don't see any of you until then.'
"And, you know, despite him saying that, we had become good friends and stayed good friends. It's been thirteen years, and we're all scattered, to New York, LA and Boston, but we will still see each other when we're in town, hang out and reinforce the bonds that we built that summer.
"I believe that friendships are sparked by a moment of human connection, but they are bonded by shared experience. And those may be jokes exchanged on a ten hour drive, drinks that you buy for each other in a foreign country or, in some cases, doing time together at a holding pen in no-man's land.
"Thank you, and good night."