To England, this one time.

So this one time, like, last weekend or whatever, I got up wicked early to get on a bus bound for London. My super good friend Claudia was in town and she knew a guy who could put us up for a few days.
Natch, we had a good breakfast and I made us a road lunch--apples, cookies, sammies and energy drinks. Our room was clean, and leftovers were stowed in the freezer.
We were set to go and we even all bought our tickets on Wednesday. Style for days! Plus, I just love packing. Can I be both practical and cute while traveling light and turning heads?

The night before we embarked, I downloaded some apps for my itouch about London.

 Sebastien was the only one who had ever even been to London...and us girls couldn't give two turns for Britain.  In fact, we had no flippin clue what we could do there besides eat fish, drink Newcastles and tea and stand in front of a clock. Turn on your itouch and five minutes later--there you go, downloaded: Tube maps, street maps, points of interest and cheep eats. From those combined efforts we picked out some sweet shit to do. Some military blah blah blah for Seba, somethin artsy for Claudia and Diagon Alley for me................ becauseI'm ten.
Being that Claudia's from the former English colony known as Toronto, we also talked about going to the Occupy London protests with really funny signs. I'm serious, I packed markers. Mine was all, "Fuck the Stamp Tax." And hers was all, "England out of Canada."
Ideally, this cunning mockup would also potentially be arranged:

We are gods of cleverness.

It was perfect. We got to the bus on time, we handed over our passports to the ticket man, everything checked out. We waited on the bus for like 45 mins while stragglers found seats and four hours later we came to the French frontier in Calais. Instantly, I got nervous. But all my ducks were in a row. Nervous was just habit. I had packed my American passport, Sebastien's French one and our livre de famille--proof that I was married to him, a Frenchmen.
Claudia was in line with me, and Seba was in the EU line. It was then that I looked down at my passport and saw Sebastien's face in lieu of my own. When Claudia tells it, she says my eyes bugged out, I laughed once and my mouth closed. How I remember it, was that the room started to spin and my guts tightened. As I ran back towards the bus knowing I didn't bring the other American passport, I struggled to keep my inner monologue from bubbling out of my mouth in all caps and bold print: I gave my passport to the man at the ticket couter back in Paris!  I watched him open it!! Holy fuck I am so fucked!!! I'm going to be deported!!!! I am clearly going to be deported!!!!
The bus driver walked up to me and I wasn't even faking 'kicked puppy' when he asked me en Francais if I was alright.
"There is a problem. I do not have my propre passport." 
He didn't understand.
"My passport," I said gesturing, "in fact it is the passort American of my husband. Not mine."
He didn't know what to do and as such was basically useless to me at this point. Ready to puke, I ran back inside and got in line with Sebastien.  To his credit, after listening attentively to our shared predicament he tried very hard not to murder me with his eyes. The guy behind the counter felt differently about my imminent death.
"Why do you not have your propre passport? It is not possible for me to go to England with the passport of my sister." And so on, while I held my hands up and said ok, ok, ok. Over and over again.
I knew I had done wrong. I knew I was finally caught. I had overstayed my welcome and I had just painted a big red button on my back that said "Exit strategy obvious. Kick me out, maintenant!" That's all there was left to do. But he was a cop, so he read my body language and finally heard my words and he smiled.  He gestured us over to a nonfuctional computer so that people could get back on the bus faster than not at all.
Did we live part-time in France part time in U.S.?
I was ready to say yes, but Sebastien was an Honest Abe.
Did I have a carte de sejour?
Why, would that show up on the computer?
Why yes it would. Did I have one?
I trailed off with a good solid um and he went to the back room to touch computer keys and talk about us, if I am to make presumptions based on the stream of key strokes, rando french phrases and curious boarder police officers that kept coming around the corner with curious, quiet eyes to gawk.
Given a moment to converse: No, Sebastien. I do not have a wallet with a credit card or my driver's licence. I packed light after all, and none of those things would be useful in any situation but this.

Again, I knew I was to blame. I knew he was rightfully indignent.

So all I could do was keep asking him not to yell at me.
We came to some sort of arrangement with the boarder patrol about my remaining in France and even after we insisted, Claudia would not go on without us. So the three of us were let out of a code-operated door in a barbed wire fence and told to walk to the town center and get a train back to Paris. "Call ahead, maybe you could get your ticket refunded today." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We started walking. We didn't have the cellphone. We left the cellphone on the bus. It was a long walk to Calais town center and a longer ride back to Paris.
Ho-hum. We didn't make it to London. But we did make it a good weekend.

We went for a hike, broke into an abbey, had a homemade fondu and occupied Paris. Plus, did I mention I still live in France?

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