SST: The Bridgekeeper

SESAME STREET TUESDAY

Today I am driving from Ann Arbor to the Buffalo airport to pick up my parents. If you're going from Michigan to New York the fastest way to go is through Canada. Then from Buffalo we're headed up to Toronto to spend a few days before heading back down to New York to meet up with my sister and her family in Palmyra. That means today I will cross the border three times. Going over the bridge into Canada usually isn't a big deal at all, but I have gotten interrogated pretty harshly a few times when crossing back into the U.S.

In the summer of 2008 I spent about a month in upstate New York doing a production of Mozart's Così fan Tutte. After it was over I drove back home through Canada, and when I reached the bridge to cross over into Detroit the border guard gave me the third degree. He was suspicious of me already because I said I was coming from New York, I lived in Ann Arbor, and yet I had a Utah license plates. He asked me what I was doing in New York and when I told him I was doing a Mozart opera out there he got this look on his face like, "That's the worst fake alibi I've ever heard." I pulled the musical score out of my bag to help corroborate my story. He was still not appeased and he ordered my trunk to be searched by the drug-sniffing dogs. When he opened my trunk he saw my keyboard and finally decided that the opera story checked out. I was surprised he didn't make me sing an aria from the show to seal the deal.