I was thoroughly shocked. My brain had gone out to lunch—frozen solid. The usual mental chatter, that constant buzzing of thoughts, had ground to an abrupt halt. Both of us—the chubby customs officer and myself—stood motionless, staring in disbelief at the slightly misshapen stuffed animal lying on the scuffed carpet in front of the customs booth. It was a ridiculous green-and-blue turtle, slumped over lifelessly, like a drunk at last call. "What’s in the turtle, goddamnit?!" the officer bellowed, his face as red as an overripe tomato.
Los Angeles International Airport, 1995.
My mental paralysis began to thaw, reluctantly making room for something more familiar—my habitual short temper, especially when dealing with petty, time-wasting government officials. Customs agents in particular held a special place in the hell of my personal tolerances.
I knew his type instantly. Like most of his kind, he operated under the delusion that flailing his stubby arms and shouting like a human thundercloud would somehow intimidate me.
It didn’t. Not one bit.
“How the hell would I know? It was a gift from my girlfriend in Mexico. Why don’t you just cut the bloody thing open and see for yourself?”
The agent’s chunky fingers hovered over his Swiss Army knife, opening and closing in indecision. He seemed to be weighing the risk of dissecting the sad stuffed turtle against his confidence that I was smuggling something more sinister than questionable taste in plush toys.
“Alright then,” he barked. “Let’s x-ray this ugly mutt and see what it contains! Last chance, boy, what’s in it?”
“I am not your boy, officer!” I snapped, letting my irritation flare. “Do what you want.”
With a sharp jerk of his head, he motioned to a colleague, who promptly whisked the inert turtle away to the x-ray room.
I was doomed.
My buddy Willy, his buddy Joe ( most certainly an alias) and myself in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico... The Teddy bear joined this Motley Crew later...
Mexico, Muscle & Massive Miscalculations
Mexico in the early ’90s was a lawless pharmacy with palm trees.
There we were—three idiots flexing like off-brand action figures—completely unaware that one of us (hint: the one who vanished forever) would soon stuff half of Quintana Roo’s pharmaceutical inventory into a teddy bear the size of a minor planet and attempt to stroll through U.S. Customs like Santa Claus on methadone.
Willy’s “master plan” ended exactly as one would expect: badly, mysteriously, and with no forwarding address.
I, however, would get my own moment of glory months later—standing in front of a U.S. Customs agent who interrogated my stuffed turtle with the zeal of an underpaid exorcist.
He squeezed it, threatened it, accused it of espionage, and finally body-slammed the poor thing onto the floor when it refused to confess.
Moral of the story?
Never trust a teddy bear.
Never argue with an American customs officer named Chad-with-an-attitude.
And never, ever assume a stuffed animal will survive a bureaucratic meltdown.