Border Story

I've spent most of my life living in border towns. And it's fun being just a few minutes away from a foreign culture. That doesn't work so well here in Seattle (because Vancouver, BC, while a lovely city, isn't the most exotic place on earth), but when I lived in San Diego, we frequently made trips to the place that Krusty the Klown called the happiest place on earth: Tijuana, Mexico.

Tijuana's great, if you don't mind the squalor and poverty. There's little children all over the place trying to sell you chiclets ("Chicle! Chicle!") for a few cents. If you learn no other Spanish before going to Tijuana, I strongly advise you learn to say "No mas ninos con chicle" while running very fast. This won't work, but it's fun to say.

This one time, around 1990 (I think), my friend Rufus (not his real name, but at least it's funny-sounding) and I were going to Tijuana because Rufus had been reading a lot of Mondo 2000, and wanted to see if smart drugs were all they were cracked up to be. Well, he knew they wouldn't be everything Mondo 2000 said ("They'll make you a genius who will live forever and drives a Maserati!"), but he wanted to see what effect they had. He bought some books and researched the whole topic, but the smart drugs he wanted to ty out weren't readily available in the U.S.

I'm not sure whether they were technically illegal or just "not FDA-approved", but the most efficient way to find samples was to hop over the border. I went along, because I'm always up for witnessing a fiasco in person.

We left the car many miles north and took the trolley down to the border. The foot entrance to Mexico looks a lot like the entrance to a theme park; you walk through a big revolving-door set of bars, and bam! you're in Tijuana. We had the option of sharing a cab with eight other people for the mile and a half to Revolucion (the main tourist drag), but it's more fun to walk. One of the cabbies also wanted us to see a donkey show.

The donkey show is, I suspect, a myth. Supposedly, it's a show with a donkey. And a young lady. And, well, so on. But I've never talked to anyone who's actually seen one, and I've asked fraternity denizens. So I doubt it. I wanted to take the cabbie up on his offer, but Rufus doesn't have my taste for fiasco-watching. That, and he was convinced that the "donkey-show" would really turn out to be a "whack us on the head and take our money and possibly kill us" show. So he insisted we keep walking.

On the bridge -- did I mention that there's a bridge? There's a bridge -- there was a kid doing a shell game with matchboxes. I was thrilled that people still do that. Also, I was impressed with the choice of locale; not only is it on the tourist-walking path, it's also easy to post lookouts, because the cops can only come from two directions.

Eventually, we got to Revolucion and looked for a farmacia (that's Spanish for "pharmacy", if you're having trouble following this). The first one we found had an entire wall of sterile syringes, so we assumed they didn't feel an obligation to abide by US laws. Rufus set about trying to ask if the guy had smart drugs, but his Spanish wasn't quite up to the task of communicating chemical names, and he ended up pulling out one of his Smart Drug books. And the guy behind the counter pulled out his own copy of the same book. And a few minutes later, Rufus had three or four types of smart drug to try, and we were on our way home.

Now, between Tijuana and San Diego is this thing called a "border". And although some people choose to bypass it, Rufus and I like to think that we're reasonably law-abiding people, so we came in through the regular customs counter.

I went first and said that I had nothing to declare, particularly switchblades, firecrackers, or fresh fruit. Then I noticed that Rufus was about to go through customs with a plastic bag that clearly said "farmacia" on it, and which had substances that I wasn't entirely sure were legal. So, because I am a true friend, I edged forward and pretended I wasn't with him.

Rufus kept his passport and wallet in his chest pocket, under a zipped-up jacket (which is a good idea if you go to Tijuana; not all the cute little kids are satisfied by selling you chiclets), and was reaching for it while the customs official was asking him if he had anything to declare. Partway through the sentence (right around "Do you have anyth --"), the official looked at Rufus, and noticied that under his jacket, Rufus was wearing a stylish FBI sweatshirt (which he got, um, somewhere). And as soon as he saw the FBI logo and that Rufus was pulling out "identification", he waved him through without even looking in the bag.

It was cool. I forget how the smart drugs turned out.