Ron’s Blog

Border crossing

We took Oz into Canada for the first time last week on vacation.  (We went to  Niagara Falls, where we’d gone to get married 11 years (!) ago.)  Nice trip, and people were, as usual, nice to us in spite of our being American.  (And how could they tell so easily?  One restaurant actually brought the bill out in US dollars without seeing our car, credit cards, or anything else.)

But customs was a nice clash of cultures.  On the way in, Canadian customs was a pleasant woman who (rightly) asked Oz several questions to confirm what our documents indicated: that he was our son and that we had the right to take him with us.  On the way back, US customs was a guy doing the “that’s right, I’m a bad ass cop” act who totally ignored the fact that we were transporting a 7-year old, but yelled at Theresa for forgetting to mention at first that we had a couple of Canadian peaches in our cooler for lunch (which he then didn’t look at or make us dump). 

I know I feel safer from terrorists.