“I had left home (like all Jewish girls) in order to eat pork and take birth control pills. When I first shared an intimate evening with my husband, I was swept away by the passion (so dormant inside myself) of a long and tortured existence. The physical cravings I had tried so hard to deny finally and ultimately sated... but enough about the pork.” - Roseanne Barr

It was a normal day. We had done our normal grocery shopping just over the French border. We took our normal bus route home. We went through the normal border crossing, which most of the time doesn't even have anyone there, on the way back.

Except this time the bus was stopped.

Two very tall men got aboard and said “Passports!”

John and I got ours out and waited until they got to us.

They looked at our passports. They looked at us. They looked at our grocery bags. They asked what was in them.

All of a sudden I forgot everything we just bought. I mumbled something about cereal, veggies, chicken, and pork.

PORK?!

Officer: “How much do you have?”

D: “Ummm… I don’t know… a couple of kilograms…but that includes the chicken…”

Officer: “The pork. How much do you have exactly?”

D: long pause as I try to remember how much pork we bought, the conversion from pounds to kilos, and how to speak French

“Uhhh, maybe one and a half kilograms?”

Officer: “Come with us.”

We headed into the search room that consisted of four white walls and one metal table in the middle. Something like where you would envision people are strip searched before they are admitted into prison. Which is what I started imagining.

“What are you in here for?”

“I killed someone. They deserved it. What are you in here for?”

“I had too much pork.”

And then I would die in jail.

They had us unload some of our groceries and kept asking for the pork. They asked if we understood French, and I couldn’t decide if I should say yes or play dumb and say no. In the interest of honesty, since it’s always easier to keep your story straight that way, I said yes. I figured if this really did get escalated to the Supreme Court like I imagined, I should be honest from the beginning. They started telling us about the pork regulations and how all pork over ½ kilogram per person must be declared at the border. I knew there were limits to what you could bring over the border, but I didn’t realize the pork limit was so low and that it’s such a touchy subject. Must be some kind of French pig lobbying scheme.

The tall men decided to let us go without a fine this time. I decided not to ask if I could get a picture with them for the blog before we left. Under my breath I told John to pack our stuff, very quickly... FASTER, and we got on the next bus home. Good thing they didn’t check for bus tickets, because there is a small possibility that we might not have been totally legal there either.

My heart was racing all the way home. It was my first real run-in with the law. I'm sorry Mom and Dad. I know you're disappointed. But I will never smuggle pork again. Maybe drugs. But not pork…that was scary.