RADIOACTIVE GIRL

Have you ever wanted to be a superhero? Maybe MermaidMan, like on SpongeBob? Or Mr. Incredible (the Incredibles?) Or even Superman? Or maybe you just wanted a specific superhero characteristic, like being able to fly, or disappear, or stretch to amazing lengths. How about being radioactive? Well, let me tell you, it's not that great.

I had some medical test done so last Wednesday I was injected with something that makes me radioactive. The doctors said I'd be this way for about a month. It, apparently, doesn't hurt me at all, but they warned me to stay away from anyone pregnant or any babies for at least a week. So, no Julia, no Lisa...of course, I was planning on spending Wednesday and Thusday with Julia, but I didn't. I did see Julia on Thursday, but I stayed away from her, which is almost impossible when she looks up and smiles at you.

The doctor also warned me that if I crossed the border into Canada I'd set off some alarm that picks bombs and most likely get pulled over and searched. His advice was just to stay in the US for a month, but I already had plans to meet Amy's parents in Niagara-on-the-Lake for dinner Saturday. So he gave me a letter saying I was radioactive and was not carrying a bomb, but told me it probably wouldn't help much at the border.

So yesterday afternoon Amy and I drove up to Niagara-on-the-Lake. As we crossed the bridge I got a little scared, but the Canadian Customs guy just asked where we lived, where we were going, and told us to have a nice day. We did have a nice day. It included a lot of wine tasting and some good food. So by the time we were driving home I wasn't really thinking about the border, but more about sleeping. We crossed the bridge and waited to get to the customs guy and when we got there, everything got crazy. He asked us where we were from, where we had been all day, and then if either of us had had any medical testing recently. I said yes and handed him the letter and he yelled," I found the source, it's the blue SUV in lane 4." We got pulled over. So did the car behind us, because I am SO radioactive that there was "spillover" into their car. They took me out of the car and into the building where they held this sensor thingy toward me forever while Amy had to drive her car through this big machine. After about 8 hours (maybe really 5 minutes) the agent testing my radioactivity left me alone in the building (not really aolne...I was sitting in a room full of people.) One of the guys in the room looked at me and said, "Hey, is this normal? Do they, like, pull over a random number of people and search their cars?" I asked him what lane he had been in. He said lane 4. He was the spillover car. I apologized. The agent came back a few minutes later and said, "Ok, miss, you can go. You're going to be radioactive for the next 6 weeks or so, though, so this is going to happen anytime you cross the border during those 6 weeks."

I think I might move to Canada.