I’m continually receiving notices that it’s time to get my Real ID. Unfortunately, when it was time to update my driver’s license a couple of years ago, I couldn’t find my social security card or my birth certificate so I just got a traditional license again, figuring I could get my Real ID later.

Well, I still haven’t gotten around to it. Knowing me, I’ll end up waiting until I need to fly somewhere and I’ll be frantically trying to get it at the last minute.

Not that long ago we didn’t need anything special to travel into Canada or Mexico. In the late 80s my now husband and I traveled to northern Minnesota with his brother and sister-in-law for a job interview she had. Driving around, we kept seeing signs pointing to the nearby route into Canada. Since we had time and none of us had been there before, on a whim we decided to go there, drive around for a while and then come back, just so we could say we’d been to a foreign country. 

It was easy to get into Canada. We were just waved through the port of entry and were there. We drove around for a while but it wasn’t as exciting as we thought it would be, as it looked exactly like the Minnesota countryside we’d just left. So we turned around and headed back to the states. 

This time, however, we were actually stopped by U.S. border agents and asked what our business in Canada was. I thought our reason was funny, so naively, I told them we were just there to look around and had only been there for half an hour.

That turned out to be a big mistake, as apparently, the agents didn’t find the story as humorous as I did. We were directed off the road, told to get out of the car, and brought into a nearby building. Turning over our IDs, we watched through the windows as agents thoroughly and systematically went through our car inside and out. 

Turns out, zipping in and out of a foreign country looks suspicious, not humorous. Who knew?

After nearly an hour we were allowed to continue on our way and were soon back in Minnesota. 

Supposedly it’s now much harder to cross the border than it was then. If that’s the case, why are we having so many problems with it?