Trouble in the Great White North
My friend Chet McGovernson is one of those people to whom amazing things happen. And by amazing, I mean fucked up.
Chet has never won the lottery. He’s never been “discovered” by a top talent agent for his outstanding ability to… to… eat Kluski noodles, for instance. He’s never found a Rembrandt at a garage sale or discovered a chest full of gold doubloons while scuba diving. In fact, Chet doesn’t own a scuba suit at all. Not even one.
No, Chet is the guy who comes to a stoplight, looks over, and sees a clown in the next car, in full makeup and hair, smoking a cigarette and swearing. He’s the guy who sets the gas cap on top of his trunk and drives off, but then literally stumbles over that same gas cap a week later halfway across town. He’s the guy who sees a band with a spastic singer named Ron House, makes dumb jokes several times a day about Ron House for months, and then sees Ron House in another city, behind the counter at a store, eating a McDonald’s salad.
I think we all know someone who has created homemade Mother’s Day cards, cut and pasted the dictionary’s definition of “mother” into the cards, sent the cards to literally every single mother and grandmother of anyone he even remotely knows, and then discovers only after sending them out that he accidentally included the definition below “mother” as well, which just happens to be “motherfucker.” Chet is that guy, too.
So when I heard that Chet had gotten busted by Canadian customs, I actually wasn’t surprised at all. Not because he was trafficking drugs or smuggling Mexicans, but because he’s just that guy.
Before I go any further, I want to warn you that you are going to think I’m making this story up. I swear I am not.
Anyway, you already sort of know Chet, who I realize now I accidentally called “Chuck” throughout all of this post. You know him because he used to work at Mr. P’s Barn. In fact, the McGovernsons are rather close to Mr. P. for a reason I’ve never been able to uncover, which is probably why they knew that he wasn’t dead. Chet’s mother Stacy used to pretty much run the Barn. I think there might be a fractured love affair in there somewhere, possibly between Chet and bacon.
Or between Chet and Mr. P’s Ford Bronco.
Chet loved to drive Mr. P’s Bronco. So it was actually convenient when, each year, Mr. P. would head to Florida for the winter and leave his Bronco at home. To keep it in shape, he asked the McGovernsons to drive it on occasion. Chet was always happy to oblige. He’d drive it to the store. To Long John Silver’s. To his classes at the university. And to Canada.
Where you’d think the guards would know about him and his random, pointless visits. But they did not.
“Citizenship?” asked the man in the booth.
“American.”
“Are you carrying any cigarettes or alcohol?”
Chet pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “Just these.”
“Purpose in Canada?”
Chet literally had no purpose whatsoever.
He told the agent, “No purpose whatsoever.”
The agent was confused. Most people come over to gamble. To shop. To sightsee. To visit. So he asked a follow-up: “How long will you be staying?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a half-hour.”
“And you’re going to…?”
Chet shrugged amiably. “I just want to drive around.”
Suspicious, the agent turned to his second-tier questions. “What do you do for a living?”
At the time, Chet was a student. But as he didn’t currently have a job, he said, “I’m unemployed.”
“I see. Is this your car?”
Chet frowned. “Sort of.”
“May I see your license and registration?”
Chet pulled out the registration and his license, and handed them to the guard.
The man in the booth looked from one document to the other. “This is not your car.”
“No. No it is not.”
“Whose car is it?”
“It’s my boss’s car.”
Here’s where Chet’s astonishing ability to fuck things up catches up with him. The guard said, “You said you were unemployed.”
Chet knew by now that his answers weren’t up to par, but he couldn’t put his finger on a way to explain his way out. He could have told the agent that he had a boss during the summers, but he didn’t.
Instead, he said, “It’s… um… my mom’s friend’s car.”
The guard nodded. “Okay. Where is your mom’s friend?”
Chet answered with blunt honesty: “I have no idea.”
“When will he be back?”
“No clue.”
Chet’s the guy who amazing things happen to. He’s the guy whose two-man ensemble, “Lol’s ‘87 Hairdew,” gets banned from a coffee house because “you make customers go away,” leaving him to cart around a dead amplifier in his freezing truck all winter long. He’s the guy who loses a hundred pounds by biking every day, decides on whim to take a day off, then immediately regains 100 pounds during several months of lethargy.
The customs agent said, “Are you at least insured on this car?”
Chet wasn’t sure. There was supposed to have been a rider, seeing as Mr. P. left the Bronco with the McGovernsons all winter, every winter.
“I think so,” he said.
“Can I see the insurance card?”
Chet pulled it out and handed it to the man, who scanned it.
“You aren’t insured on this car.”
“No. I guess I’m not.”
The agent nodded. “What’s that big piece of expensive-looking electronic equipment in the back there?” he said. Chet turned around and saw the remnant from his Lol’s ‘87 Hairdew experiment, still sitting where he had left it.
“It’s an amplifier,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to get it out of here.”
The guard said, and I quote: “Why would you want to immigrate with such a speaker?”
Chet started sweating. Sweating like Ron House eating a McDonald’s salad.
By now, the guard was suspicious. Unemployed American kid. No agenda. Big guy, acting funny. Possible stolen wares in the back seat. The guard craned his neck into the Bronco’s rear and indicated the large Rubbermaid storage container next to the amplifier. The Rubbermaid container that Chet had seen many times at his own house; the one his mother often carried laundry in.
The guard pointed. “What’s in there?”
Chet exhaled, trying to slow his heartbeat. “I think it’s my mom’s laundry.”
“Could you open it, please?”
The guy amazing things happen to. That’s Chet. And by “amazing things,” I mean “catastrophic, epic failures.” Failures like discovering on the spot that Mr. P. also owns a Rubbermaid container, and that it is not filled with laundry. Or food. Or even tools.
Failures like opening a container in front of an already suspicious customs agent and finding a thick yellow rope with large, gore-stained hooks along its entire length. And, for good measure, a huge bloody machete.
At this point, the agent got a lot more interested. Three-hours-in-a-small-room interested. Many-questions-about-the-giant-Ziplock-in-the-glove-compatment-filled-with-unmarked-pills interested.
It was, Chet tells me, a very, very long day.
But, that’s what happens when you try to cross the border in a car that isn’t yours and whose owner is MIA, while carrying pills and instruments of torture.
Fortunately, Chet’s grandmother owns two waffle irons. One of them chirps like a bird when the waffles are ready. And that little factoid has absolutely no relevance to anything, but it can be a ray of sunshine when you’re looking at 30 years in a federal prison.
Chet screwed up. He should have known better. I go to Canada all the time, but I never bring my drugs or murder weapons. And if I did, I’d at least clean off the blood and intestines.
But I would certainly bring waffle irons. Because that chirping is fucking ridiculous.