MC Quixote

Degraded for the Dog Part 49

Caylee was surprised how supportive her dad was about her going back to find Sancho. His hands signed,

"Money and papers aren't as important as family and we have a family member who's missing; go find him. I want to go with you Caylee, to make sure you're safe. But without papers, it's difficult. It takes more time and more money without papers."

"Dad, you know Sancho has been by my side the last five years; I have to go back and look for him."

"Well, you have my blessing if you insist on going, I just want you to be safe."

Caylee's mom didn't understand. She was upset now as she pleaded,

"We've been back home together as a family for about a week, after seven years apart, and now, we're splitting up again, over a dog? Seven years apart Caylee. Please, just let it be."

"Mom, I love you, and I don't want to go against your wishes, but please try to understand what Sancho means to me."

Caylee's mom has no idea what this other life was that Caylee had lived the past seven years and that's one of the tragic things about her daughter's transformed life. But to Caylee, at this moment, the idea of losing Sancho seems even sadder. Loss is worse than misunderstanding. Lost time, that's rough, but it's not the most tragic thing, loss of life is.

And that's the thing Caylee learns crossing the line, the border; there's so much loss and sadness. She can see this invisible line, like a net, trapping lives, dreams, families, friends and releasing so much pain, on both sides of the line. Caylee wants to blur it out and believe life is more important than the lines we draw as humans. And there's a life out there she's so connected with she'd cross any line to find him.

Caylee pleads with her mom,

"Who knows, maybe Sancho is dead, or maybe someone took him in. Maybe I won't be able to find him, and how long should I look for him? I remember when we first got Sancho's shots, we didn't have the money to put an identity chip in his shoulder; looking back now, my only wish is that we had."

Caylee was able to book a flight leaving later that day but to get a decent rate she would have to fly through New York. She packed the basics in a carry-on bag and before sunset she is back in the USA; but for me to be officially allowed into the country, I would have to navigate customs, which starts with a strange dance with a robot.

The port of entry labyrinth starts with a deceptive looking faster self-checkout process where you put your passport on a scanner to begin. The scanner is part of this bigger machine. After it scans my passport it begins to move its mechanical head to adjust to my height and take a picture of me. It's kind of intimidating to have this photographic eye start taking pictures of you and send them off to some database somewhere. It kind of feels like having a mugshot taken to get past the first gatekeeper.

Then the robotic machine kind of grumbles and then spits out a printout you need to carry with you to the next gatekeeper. As I waited and approached the next checkpoint, I overheard someone say,

"Did you get the X?"

I didn't really understand what this meant but then I saw that I had a large X on the printout that robot had produced for me. What did the X mean?

Once I got to the next gatekeeper, I was directed to go into a line with all the other people who had Xs on their printouts. From this line, I would then slowly proceed to a border agent stationed at these little cubicles. At first it didn't really seem like that big of a deal, but then I noticed the flow of people without Xs and how their line was moving very fast to the border agents' booths, while all the Xed peoples' line was at an almost stand-still.