When the border patrol pulled me over last summer when I was visting New York, they were highly suspicious of the Canadian way of stating the day-month-year as written down in governmental shorthand....in the US it is always written month-day-year, except sometimes when it is written year-day-month. (Yeah, I shake my head too!) For instance, my birthday is the twenty first of August, 1956. So my drivers licence has it as 21-08-56. My US importers permit has it as 08-21-56. More to the point, my driver's licence tags expired on my birthday, 21 Aug 05. Its written right there on the little sticker...21/08/05. Right....this was sometime in July, and according to them, the tag had expired in May. They eventually decided there was a problem when they suddenly realized that THAT meant the YEAR it expired would be 2021. Or maybe 2008. Hmmmm...... An hour later, they told me to move along. I noticed that the BP turned into the nearest pharmacy...no doubt to pick up a bottle of aspirin for the headache STAG always seems to give people!!!
This was my only real experience with the Border Patrol on the US side. Very nice people, but woefully untrained in cultural differences which apply to the people they have to deal with. I can only imagine the difficulty they face in dealing with Quebecers. Or Mexicans. Or Chicanos. Or Chinese.
Anyway, here's a little tidbit...
3 minutes after two in the morning of the 4th of May will be
2/03/04/05/06
Only in the British Empire...of course.
STAG....
2 comments:
What morons! Sorry you had such a bad experience, but at least you can laugh about it now.
Cultural Friction. Difficult to predict, identify, or deal with.
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