The Border

A One-Sentence Story

Noting his visa was due to expire, the barefoot American consulted the officials at the Costa Rican port of L where his boat was anchored, and they stamped his passport out and told him that to obtain a new visa, all he had to do was to leave the country and then re-enter it, so a few days later he walked into a shopping center in the town of A, which stood on the border between Costa Rica and Panama (thus giving Costa Ricans easy access to Panamanian goods and vice versa), but when he tried to enter the Panamanian side of the shopping center, the Panamanian officials refused to let him in—

he had been stamped out of Costa Rica days ago, the Panamanians said, where had he been and what had he been doing?—

and when he tried to return to the Costa Rican side of the shopping center, the Costa Rican officials also refused to let him in—

he had been stamped out of Costa Rica days ago, the Costa Ricans said, where had he been and what had he been doing?—

so he went back to the Panamanians and tried to reason with them in both Spanish and English, but they shook their heads and folded their arms across their chests, and then he went back to the Costa Ricans and tried to reason with them in both Spanish and English, but they also shook their heads and folded their arms across their chests, and that was that—

there he was, a barefoot American trapped forever in a Costa Rican/Panamanian shopping center no-man’s land, while the Costa Ricans and Panamanians around him, oblivious to his plight, continued buying their cowboy hats, plastic bowls, string hammocks, and sacks of fresh mamonas chinos—

except he soon realized he could just walk back out the door he had originally entered, which he did, returning to his boat in the port of L for six more months—

the screeching macaws and squawking parrots roosting in the nearby trees providing the cacophonous background music that accompanied his daily activities—

until, one day, having already been stamped out of Costa Rica, the barefoot American simply weighed anchor and sailed away, headed for C.