Your “Fete Nationale – Le Jour St. Jean Baptiste” Sunday Evening Open Thread

So yes, Senor’s adventures in Quebec. As we know, unlike Rikki I do not have a record of romantic success with citizens around the globe. Or anywhere else for that matter.

What I do have is the ability to get stopped by law enforcement organizations when traveling. It is a good thing I haven’t gone skulking around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue because someone would take a picture of me and it would be decried as either an illegal immigrant, a terrorist, or Chinese espionage. I’m still not sure about that last one but a kid in my kindergarten class did call me Chinese [Senor] once. Either way, I am none of those things, and nationality-wise not from any of those regions in the world for that matter.

This incredible streak of luck started when I was 14 and going to Canada. My violin teacher had started a chamber music festival in a little town in Quebec, so of course I was a participant. I didn’t go up with any of my family (my grandparents came up a few days later, more on that in a bit) so I went up with another family. It was a pair of my teacher’s other students and since they were even younger than me, their parents. I believe I gave them the entire Rocky plot (the first four movies, let’s say) in a paragraph since they hadn’t seen them.

We get to the border with our passports, and we come into the building. And we’re there for like a half-hour. And being 14 and naive I’m thinking “Hmm, maybe they do this kind of thing with everyone driving across? But England wasn’t like this when I flew there.” No, what happened is they interviewed the parents of the kids I was going up with. And then Madre Weaselo put a note in my passport giving permission to travel with them and our number just in case.

So, as she described it to me, she gets a phone call, “Hi Mrs. [Weaselo], this is Border Patrol. We have your son.” Which she laughed at the straightforwardness of it and admitted she was expecting a call. But yeah, Canadian Border Patrol called my house.

As for my grandparents, my grandfather got a speeding ticket while driving to dinner or something and nearly got into an argument with the cop (again we’re in Quebec) and might’ve cursed him out in Romanian. So they sent him the ticket, which also has the option to make a donation. He never paid it, and we’re pretty sure that if he were to ever go to Quebec or Canada (unlikely considering his current state of health but you never know) he’d get detained and Madre Weaselo would get “Hi Mrs. [Weaselo], this is Border Patrol. We have your father-in-law” on the phone or something.