A close girlfriend, just returned from a 3 month visit to France, explained how her basic sense of honesty caused her to declare that she did, in fact, have a “food item” in her luggage at customs in Minneapolis. The food item in question was a sealed can of pate someone had given her as a parting gift.
She was ushered into a large room with various peoples who also had “food items” and got to watch surly customs agents launching various fruits and vegetables at bins along the wall for hours. Add to that the delights of experiencing a drug-sniffing dog! After the first “food room,” there was (apparently) a second food room and, well, the connecting flight didn’t allow for hours spent watching surly customs inspectors launch miscellaneous fruits at garbage bins.
When it finally came time for her to “declare” the precise food item she had, the customs agent just grunted and passed her on through…too late to make a connecting flight to Des Moines, I think.
Reminds me of the time we were asked, when re-entering the country from Cancun, if we had had any contact with “livestock” and I truthfully piped up, “What about the spider monkeys that climbed all over us at Coba?” Despite my husband’s best attempts to muzzle me, much merriment ensued. These are the sorts of adventures I relate in “Laughing through Life” because, really, you have to laugh or else you’d cry.
Pamela
Thanks for telling that, Connie. You have a wonderful way with words and a great sense of how to tell a story. The moral that I get from all this is that we are too honest. If I had just said no about the pâté and you had said no about the spider monkeys, we both would have been spared the inconvenience. I always told my children and my students to always tell the truth. I don’t want to think after all these years that I was wrong ! Sigh.