Chocolate Snowflake just reminded me of a little incident we had on our train ride up to Montreal. I sort of put it out of my mind, but it can serve as a lesson to all of us that in some instances our reputations precede our arrivals.
The Amtrak ride to Montreal is a picturesque twelve hour trip. The track bed runs along the Hudson River and through mountain passes in the Adirondacks. I quickly forgot who I was and immersed myself into the views of farms, with cattle and horses and little Main Street upstate New York townships. When we arrived at the Canadian border I signed off on my customs form and gave it to the border patrol officer.
The officer looked at my passport and me several times. He asked me for my social security number and he checked it off on the manifest printout he was holding. At that point he told me that he would need to take my passport to another officer for verification. I said “Okay” and shrugged my shoulders. This was prah’lee one of those cases where Canada has to limit the number of Blacks coming into their country. How else do you think they maintain a totally FREE universal healtcare system?
When the officer returned he told me to walk to rear of the car where the other officer was holding my passport. This was a bit odd since no one else in the car had been singled out for “verification”. The officer that was awaiting me had a longer printout in his hands. He asked me for my name and my social security number. After I repeated my particulars he asked me a question in his Canadian accent…
“Have you ever been before a magistrate?”
“Come again?”
“Have you ever been before a magistrate or justice?”
WTF is this nigga talking about? Have I ever been arrested? Hells chea! I start telling him the story of the first time I was arrested. You folks know that GOD lives in the details so I go in on the whole crack scene in 1986 (this is a story I have in draft form here at the DP Dot Com server. I want to give it to y’all, but it reminds me of my dad and how good a man he was, and then I get sad when I think about how I disappointed him).
After that I start to tell him about the time that ThunderCracker, SoundWave and I were nabbed in the Bronx in a whip we had stolen. That really wasn’t what the officer wanted either. He was interested in the charge that was called ‘Theft Of Services’. Oh shit! That was the last time I had been arrested. That was an embarrassing moment because it was some serious da-dunt-da-dunt shit. I was arrested in a sweep of subway turnstile jumpers. I caught a case for basically not having a dollar and a quarter.
That is some poor dumb nigga bullshit.
The Canadian border patrolman agreed that was some poor dumb nigga shit and he returned my passport to me and told me to take care.
True fucking story is that I stay winning because I stay losing.
