My Life on the Detainee List

On Thursday I made it back across the Mexican border into the homeland.... just barely.

I spent two amazing days in Baja with my BFF Christiaan, recharging my batteries so I'd be all set to face the next few months of lots of GR related travel, and the big Year of the Rat show opening at GR2 on the 16th. (Finished hanging it at about 2 am Friday morning, and VERY proud of the show and the GR staff and friends who helped hang it!)

The original plan for Mexico was actually a trip to see Stereo Total play their tour date closest to North American, in Tijuana. After just a few minutes passing through the fringes of Tijuana traffic to get to our first destination (a secret spot in Baja), and after checking in to our first hotel room of the journey, my travel companion and I decided that it was going to be an impossibility to leave the sanctuary we had arrived to and go back into the chaos of the city, even if it was our only chance to see Stereo Total before they slipped further and further South.

The decision was the right one, and we spent that evening staring at the starriest sky I've seen in decades, watching the waves glow blue with red tide, smiled back at the crescent moon as it fell into the ocean, and had a delicious night of sleep knowing we would get to enjoy so much more when the sun was up the next day.



Wednesday was spent sunbathing, wandering just a bit further into town to pet local ponies hanging out in people's front yards, enjoying criminally yummy margaritas for $1.50 and doing short story writing exercises until the hotel bar closed. It was a pretty perfect day, even if we couldn't get a roaring fire going in the fireplace in our room. Next time we're bringing lighter fluid. You'd think I'd know how to get a fire going with the practice I get at the San Diego Comic Con, but every year GR somehow channels the pyromania of our genius art and comic friends that are more in tune to nature than we are, and let them take all the well deserved glory to get the GR Bonfire blaze going.

Thursday started out just as well as Wednesday had. This time at breakfast we got the added bonus of frolicking dolphins in the waves that were in perfect view of our table on the restaurant patio. We got on the road earlier than we planned, butweren't rushed, and didn't do much grumbling about the line at the border. We car-danced to 80's music and politely declined the offers of wilting churros, warm Pepsis and ukeleles from the vendors walking the lines of traffic. Everything was pretty groovy until we got to the Border Patrol window...

In times like these, you want to land the person who's new to the job and just wants to get through the day with a low profile. We didn't get that person... we got the guy who had probably been doing the job for many, many years and loved it for the chance to puff out his chest, maybe pound it a little, and manipulate the lives of the general public in a way that amused him. Not realizing that a passport was required for travel to Mexico, I got busted for not having mine and was sent to the secondary search at the border and detained for an hour so Border Control could verify my American citizenship.

I made a few mistakes here.... not bringing my passport would be the most glaring. The second mistake I made was telling the Border Patrol officers that I was born in Seoul, Korea. The third mistake was telling them that I was a Naturalized citizen.

I'm very rarely id'ed as someone who was born overseas, but I was. I moved to the US in 1979, born to a Korean mother and an American citizen, which I learned on Thursday - regardless of circumstances, made me an American citizen at birth. For some reason, my parents told me that I obtained citizenship through naturalization, but that wasn't the case. I called my dad while I was being detained - to get some clarification about the naturalization issue, but also to let him know that I had been safe during the trip... the only difficulty was the situation I was presently in.

After the Border Patrol officer checked some other database (since I didn't show up the one for naturalized citizens) I was given a good scolding for not traveling with my passport and let go. Being detained wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I was allowed to leave the car and use the restroom, we got to see two awesome drug busts while we waited, and I got to learn a little something about myself. I feel silly for not knowing, but I guess I heard it as a child and it stuck there as a kernel of truth - kind of like when kids are told that skinny people are better than fat, and girls should be helpless while boys should never cry.

Crazy adventures in bottled water, dope sniffing dogs and self-awareness.