“My boyfriend and a couple friends and I created a theater group, and we took a show to a fringe festival in Canada. I was about 26. My boyfriend, he didn’t even smoke pot that often, but I remember we were in Canada – we had already crossed over – and I was looking through his suitcase for something and there was this pipe and pot. I am a very trusting person; I assumed he accidentally packed them. (Laughs) I talked to him about it and it was on purpose. I was like, ‘Why the f*ck would you bring that? WE CROSSED A BORDER with this! Why didn’t you tell me we had this?’ And he said, ‘Because I knew you would be mad.’
I got so angry about it. I was like, OK. Fine. We’re going to go camping. You’re going to smoke your pot, it’ll be gone by the trip back. It will be fine, but no. Coming back into the United States, I thought that would be easy because we’re Americans. It was so much harder. The border guards took us all out of the car. They searched it. They brought us into examination rooms, one by one, to talk to them. I was this close [motions small space between thumb and forefinger] to throwing my boyfriend under the bus and telling them, ‘Yeah, we have pot. I didn’t bring it. He did,’ because there was still some left. I didn’t want that stress, but I didn’t tell.
They didn’t find it, but we had bought Cuban rum, which they did find. The border guard comes out and says, ‘We found Cuban rum rolled up in one of your sleeping bags. Who bought that?’ We all looked at each other and one of our friends she was like, fine, whatever, and raised her hand. The cop was like, ‘So, how much did that cost you?’ and she said, ‘I dunno, maybe $35?’ and he said, ‘Well, it’s gonna be a lot more now.’ She was like, ‘Do you just have that line in your back pocket?’ (Laughs)
They confiscated the Cuban rum, fined her, and we all helped pay for the ticket.
I don’t know why they searched the car or what made us look suspicious. I think they were just dicks. We were all mid-20s, theater people.”
— Anonymous Upstanding Durango CitizenGot a travel story worth telling? Write it in about 400 words and send it to [email protected]. If you’d rather tell your story, send a brief synopsis to the same address. Either way, your story should be true.
