And why does it matter if the passport control officer was male?

We were traveling from a week in Tunisia, where we had attended a relatives wedding. My son (19 years old at the time…) was the last to clear Tunisian immigration, and we were all waiting a long time for him, hoping we weren’t going to miss the plane to Paris. Finally he came through: it seems he had been stopped and questioned because “you don’t look American.” (Funny thing is, my husband is of East Indian descent, traveling on an American passport, but he had no problems….). Son was told he “looked Tunisian.” Finally they were convinced after asking him several questions about American pop culture and seeing that he was able to answer them….

But once when we went to Victoria, British Columbia my husband’s brown skin did get the better of him. It seems that the Commenwealth Games were in town, and so was Prince Andrew of England. There had been some controversy because Sihks had been told they couldn’t wear their turbans for the games (for fear they would hide weapons within), and threats had been made against His Highness. So anyone who possibly could look like a Sihk was being carefully screened. There literally was a brown line and a white line getting off the ferry…it was a good lesson in profiling for my children. We waiting an hour in line, and then had every belonging searched…very thoroughly. The customs officials kept asking us if we had guns. They found none, of course…and finally let us through…totally ignoring all of the fruit in our ice chest…a total no-no….

But my favorite story of a border crossing goes back to 1970. I was 16, and my family was finishing a year’s sabbatical in Mexico City. We drove the Ford back to California. This was in the middle of the Operation Interception of the US Government; an attempt to stop drug flow into the US. Now, the night before we left I was hurrying to pack, and found a spare tennis ball in my drawer. I quickly stuffed into the bottom of a bag of old clothes. Three or four days later we were at the border, no doubt looking the worse for wear after crossing the (dusty) desert. I think the border agent saw our old Ford station wagon, asked my father what he did for a living (“I teach at the University of California at Berkeley”), and figured he had hit pay dirt. He spent the next two hours practically tearing the Ford apart. He even took a flashlight to the cracks where the windows roll down. Nothing. I think he was about to give up when one of his helpers reached into that bag of dirty laundry and hit pay dirt..an old tennis ball!!! They all excitedly gathered around as the chief took a machete and chopped my ball into. I wish I had had a camera to catch their disappointment as they realize that there were no drugs inside of that ball……

(Sorry this is so long; the memories just started rolling!)

My boyfriend and I flew from London to SFO the day after the liquid bomb scare hit. My boyfriend is British but of Indian heritage, and he looks more Afghani that Indian, so you can imagine.

His luggage came out first, and I suggested he go on ahead as he is often pulled aside for extra review.

After about 30 minutes, my luggage came through and I found him standing with a handsome agent waiting for me.

The agent took us both aside and began searching all our bags. When he opened mine, he focused on a padded mailing pouch in which I had placed a t-shirt with a mailing label on it. (It had already been opened, probably by the folks in London.) He asked who it was for and I said it was for my daughter. Why wasn’t I visiting my daughter and family? Well, I said, I visited my daughter in Maryland last month and my ex-wife doesn’t need any visits from me.

He then pulled out a bank statement that had my name and another guy’s name on it. Who is this, he asked. I said that the other name on my bank statement was my ex, but unlike my other situation, I didn’t have to pay him any alimony.

He smiled, blushed, and told us we were free to go.

The return trip was nothing, though, compared to the way down. I got past security with the wirecutters, wire, hammer and other tools I needed to re-construct the wedding arch at the ceremony. I had forgotten they were in the carry-on bag and the TSA never found them. The pre-wrapped wedding favours arrived intact as well, even though they were minature decorative clocks and should have looked for all the world like bomb-making materials.

I’m really disappointed at how homophobic some of the articles on Tripso are, especially this one. With Paris being one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, I’d think that an author who represents a agency there would be less prejudiced,