Everyone knows, each journey of a thousand miles starts with an experience with a border guard. If it’s a journey worth a damn, anyway. This trip, being extraordinary in every way (we’re all a part of it, it’s on the Internet, the South is a nice place, etc.) is no exception.
A recreation of my conversation with my strikingly loyal and all around fine travelling companion (the boyfriend) is necessary. It went down in Windsor, Ontario, close to the border, a bit like this:
Lisa: Boyfriend, I think you should drive the car over the border. The border guard will ask us where we are going, and I don’t know why we are going to Alabama.
Boyfriend (confused): Why wouldn’t we go to Alabama?
Lisa (sheepish): I know why, but others are confused by what we do.
Boyfriend (annoyed but agreeing): Pull over, I’ll drive.
Lisa and Boyfriend arrive at the border. The border guard looks particularly serious, and is checking every trunk thoroughly. I am grateful not to be driving even before this exchange:
Border Guard: Where you headed?
Boyfriend: The South. Alabama and Mississippi.
Border Guard (shaking his head disapprovingly): Nope. Nope. There’s nothing there. Nothing. I used to be from Nashville, I’ve been to all those places, there is nothing there.
Boyfriend: That’s not true! There’s the rocket thing in Huntsville, and the something else somewhere else and…
Border Guard (more interested than annoyed now): You really into history?
Boyfriend: Yeah.
Border Guard: Turn off your car and give me the keys.
So, he looked in our trunk, opened the part of my luggage where I had my feminine hygiene products, and let us go.
The moral of the story: Always listen to Lisa. Had I remained the driver, I would have been crying like a; well, a person being questioned at the border trying to explain why I was going to Alabama.
