"Laid Back, Cool Guy" or Murderer?

After telling me about the bear that accidentally crashed through a fence and fell into her grandparents' swimming pool last week — (Who knew bears don't like water?) — the 16-year-old blonde Lolita at the abandoned, off-season Vermont ski shop a few miles from the Canadian border sold us Diet Pepsis and Cherry Garcia ice cream bars and gave clear directions for heading into Quebec a few miles to the north.

As we pulled our Chrysler 300 rental up to the quiet border crossing, it felt like a formality. "It's like going into Wisconsin," — Bill Murray's classic line in Stripes — crossed my mind. But the passport listing my West Indies birthplace must have raised a flag, and the two Noridque border guards asked us to pull to the side.

A few minutes later, as car after car was waved through the border crossing while we waited impatiently, a guard came to the passenger window and asked for my driver's license. Soon after that, he returned to request my "social insurance number."

"Social security number?," I asked.

"Oui," he said, scribbling it onto a piece of paper as his partner watched us closely from the door.

Nearly half an hour later, our tension had turned into aggravation. Why were two guys with no criminal records that we could recall being held up at this tiny border crossing?

Then a guard approached the passenger's window and asked me to step out of the car. OK. ... He walked me into the building, and he and his partner, who was on the phone speaking French with a law enforcement offical, examined my hands closely and checked my entire body for tattoos. I was starting to get nervous.

"Non," said one guard into the phone.

Muffled response.

"OK, sir, you are free to go," he said.

"What just happened?" I asked. (Fair question.)

The tone got lighter.

"You have the same exact name and birth date — day and year — as a man wanted for murder in the U.S.," said one guard with a smile. "But you have a different social security number and no tattoos. You know they asked me if you looked like a murderer. I said, 'No, he kind of looks like a laid-back, cool guy.'"

What? "But maybe that's my act," I said. "How do you know I'm not just pretending to be nice and laid back?"

In retrospect, I shouldn't have joked, but the guards laughed.

"So, what's going to happen when I try to come back into the States on Sunday?," I asked.

"That's up to U.S. Customs," one responded. "I wish you luck. In the future you should carry your social security card."

"OK. Hey, how do we get to Montreal from here?," I asked, thinking that I had earned the right to ask directions.

"Go straight for a few kilometers and turn right at the giant rocket."

When I got back into the car, I told my cousin to drive straight ahead and look for the rocket.

"Is rocket their word for highway?" he wondered.

"I have no idea."

Turns out it was a giant, rusted white rocket sitting at an intersection for no apparent reason that guided us toward the highway into Montreal.

Merci, border guards.