2003dec31. As you travel by foot into Nogales, Mexico, you will come across a waist-high green traffic light with a partially-obscured button next to it. A sign a little farther away, mostly out of your field of vision, indicates that everyone who crosses into Nogales should push the button. If you push the button, a small computer goes “think think think” (here the spellchecker tells me the second “think” is spelled wrong, beautiful) and if you’re the lucky contestant, it makes a buzzing noise and the light turns red – which somehow indicates that you should turn your attention from the traffic light to the table across the way, at which sits an immigration agent. The chances of the light turning red, based on my observations as we sat in the massive queue to get back to the US (the lines come within ten feet of each other), is anywhere from one in 50 to one in 100. It was only when I was leaving Nogales for the second time that I realized I had never pushed the button. I think that’s the easiest way to avoid being picked. Years later, it was my turn to face a US agent. I told him I had a little bit of candy and he did that thing where people stop thinking for a second and then all of his security-based systems came back online and his head snapped straight with mine and he said “is that all you have?” and I almost laughed because it was so transparent -- “oh, I’m getting away with shipping all of these drugs over the border he’s about to let me g – OHMIGOD HE SUSPECTS SOMETHING HE FIGURED IT OUT” ...
