The amazing adventures of my wife, the international fruit smuggler...

The fruit pictured to the right is the longan, a white, fleshy, almost translucent fruit commonly found througout Southeast Asia. If you ever had lychee at a Chinese restaurant, it tastes about the same--very sweet and refreshing, especially when chilled. My wife loves these and will usually get a whole bagful to snack on whenever we're in a big city with a big Chinatown, as they're pretty hard to find outside of a well stocked Asian market. As you can see, there's a thin outer shell you have to peel off before you eat them, and this becomes a problem. You see, she's kind of haphazard about where she tosses these shells, and those peels often end up in other plastic bags we've got with us carrying various knick-knacks we bought while traveling. The last time we went to Vancouver six years ago, a whole bag full of those peels ended up in our luggage when we were crossing back into the U.S. How they got there is still up for debate, but may have had something to do with our rush to pack our bags as we were running late for a bus back to Seattle. MAYBE it was me who tossed them in a suitcase at the last minute, or MAYBE it was her. Anywho, customs spotted the offending contraband in the x-ray scanner, and my wife has since been fined and blacklisted by border control for trying to smuggle in foreign fruit. After coming back from Taiwan a couple of years ago, U.S. customs gave her the evil eye, a stern questioning of what she was importing into the country, and a meticulous hand inspection of all her baggage before letting her through. Meanwhile, I waltzed right through with a friendly wink and a smile to the customs agent, with my luggage only getting a cursory x-ray scan.

Fast forward to last week when we made our most recent trip out of the country to Vancouver. My wife, of course, bought another bag full of longans, but was very careful not to let any stray peels or twigs end up in our bags this time. Going through customs at the Vancouver International Airport on our way home, she proudly exclaimed that she had absolutely no fruits, vegetables, or any part of such produce in her luggage or on her person. She even remembered to toss out the bottle of water she had in her purse before proceeding through the security checkpoint. We returned home to the States without incident and my wife was satisfied that she was now the model citizen.

And what did I happen to find in one of the shopping bags we brought back from Canada full of macadamia brittle and chocolate yesterday? Well, not a longan, but still some fruit--a chocolate-covered strawberry she forgot she left in there. I guess kleptomaniac is the wrong word, but I'm sure there's some word to describe her penchant for inadvertent fruit smuggling. ;-)