In 2017 I went to Montreal where I used to live to visit some friends and hang up well I was there I was chatting with my friend Tara and she’s American and I learned that she needed to go down to the Border just to get her work visa stamped apparently the quickest way to do it you cross the border One Step come back you’re technically coming back canada and that’s all taken care of they stamp your thing and you send you on your way know when I came to my drill I wasn’t planning to leave the country so I didn’t bring my passport but I figured I could drive just to the border and let her go across and come back and everything would be fine so I borrowed my friend’s bad and I drove it down and I got down to what I thought was the Border we got out of the car and a Border guard sleeping like a tool and he he said no no no it’s about another kilometre down the road you’re going to want to just drive all the way down there and I said hope I don’t have a passport he said it’s fine you don’t actually want to go to America anyways so you’ll go through it won’t let you into America the tourney you’ll come back into Canada as was always your plan and I was like that makes a lot of sense Okay cool so we did that and we got turned around and we came back through and we pulled up to the window and the guy asked what we were doing and Tara explained all of her stuff that she was from Chicago and then she was working at McGill University and she’s been a student know she’s doing research for the University and blah blah blah and all of that stuff and no problem and then he says to me and what about you sir and I said oh I’m just along for the ride and he said what now and I said yeah I’m just along for the ride and he said well okay you have your passport and I said no I didn’t bring my passport cuz I didn’t actually intend to come to America during this trip he’s like okay well are you Canadian and I said yes and he said well how do I know that and I said well I am and he was like well how can I know that you’re Canadian if you don’t have your passport I said I don’t know what to tell you and he said you have your birth certificate on you and I said no and he sort of was like and he asked what I did have on me and I told him that I had my driver’s license and I had my health care card and he said okay let me see those and I handed him my driver’s license and my health care card and he said okay this is great I can see that you can drive in Canada and I can see that you can get Healthcare in Canada but this doesn’t prove to me that you were Canadian there’s no way for me to know that you are Canadian and I said I don’t know what to tell you and he said does it say anywhere on your person made in Canada and I looked at my friend Tara and we kind of chuckled because as you can see I have a tattoo that says literally made in Canada I lifted my sleeve I showed him the tattoo he looked for a second at it I was flabbergasted you stood up Clapton and said in 12 years I’ve been doing this job I have never had anybody show me a tattoo that says made in Canada he picks his head out the because one of his colleagues over and yells at him in French he’s not come here the guy comes over here accounts the entire story to him in French at the punchline I lift my sleeve so he can see my tattoo again in the end he hands me back my care card against me back my driver’s license he says I’m sorry to have bothered you you’re Clearly Canadian you can go on your way and that is how my kind of lame maple leaf tattoo my first tattoo when I was 22 years old classic Canadian boy tattoo that is how first tattoo got me back into Canada
The lack of punctuation is certainly a thing! I always knew that punctuation was key, but that sure is brutally apparent now.
I went to hang OUT with friends, not to « hang up ».
It’s funny to me that apple in the singular was capitalized – that really speaks to their brand power. They’ve usurped THE fruit.
Had the story been scripted there’d have been far less repetition of words. And I’d have placed different sort of plot points more deliberately. And the bigger thing is that when I tell that story in real life I lift my sleeve at the punchline, and then I stand up and recreate the reaction of the border guard.
Telling stories in person is a great pleasure for me.
