I've only had two incidents with border officials.

Once was in Romania. I was 10 at the time. We were on a long trip, we had things packed so we could carry everything if we needed to. That meant backpacks. (This was before wheeled luggage caught on and we were in plenty of places where wheels would have been basically useless anyway.) Rather than packing in the bags we had bare frames to which we strapped a suitcase.

Oops, my mother goofed and gave me my father's suitcase. I discovered it when I tried to put it on. There was no time to change things around and catch the plane, we couldn't wear each other's frames, either. Thus I had on a backpack that weighed nearly half what I did.

At the border control we each went into a separate small room with an official. The guy I got didn't bother to look at me at all, he just waved me through. Only his wave was a push--on the top of my backpack. Of course I utterly lost my balance. I managed to keep my feet under me for the couple of steps to the wall and I had time to prepare, I wasn't going to be hurt much. I hit the wall--and found it was utterly flimsy. Had there not been a structural member behind it at that point I would have crashed right through. I can just imagine the scene that would have caused. The official never realized that my stumbling was due to his actions.



The second time was England. Due to a massive string of events my mother (who was blind) and I (17 at the time) ended up in tropical attire in London with a total of $5 in cash. It took two hours to convince the passport official to check with British Airways to see if they would take her credit card for a flight onward. When they had no problem with it he finally let us in.