Other than the fact that I met this really cool straight guy in Morocco, who was also in sobriety and had many more years under his belt than I did, there is nothing interesting about this photo (unless you count the fact that no one thought to tell me that my sleeve was messed up, which I do not).

This is just us, standing above the city of Chefchaoen, after a hike, pretty boring.

So instead you get...

*A Random Drinking Story!*

Once upon a time, my flight was delayed, and after spending a few hours at the airport bar, I decided it would be fun to speak with a British accent. I was never going to see any of these airport people ever again, right? So what did I have to lose?

I don’t know that my accent would have passed the intense scrutiny of a Hollywood dialect coach, but it wasn’t like I was doing a cockney chimney sweep from Mary Poppins, either. There was some degree of authenticity to my approach. I had recently been in a relationship with a guy from Luton, England (his name was Rob), so my accent was pretty solid, as I was basically just doing my best impression of him.

I was probably about 20 years old at the time, and traveling alone, so this was just a harmless way to entertain myself. Or so I thought.

By the time we finally started boarding the plane, I had enthusiastically regaled everyone in the entire waiting area with stories of my beloved Luton, and they had eaten it up, but to be honest, my mouth was starting to hurt from forming all the words in unnatural and affected ways. Also, the main problem—and why I couldn’t wait to get on the plane and pretend to fall fast asleep— was that I had completely exhausted my entire breadth of knowledge about Luton, England.

Because you see, at that point in my life, I had never been to Luton. Hell, I’d never even left America before, much less been to England. Everything I knew about our motherland I had cobbled together through my ex’s stories about pastoral Luton and from the BBC comedy reruns I’d seen on PBS as a kid.

So imagine my horror when about 40 minutes later, our flight was delayed indefinitely due to weather complications, and we were all forced to de-board the plane. Yes, we all returned to the waiting area, and with nothing to do but wait indefinitely, everyone gathered round expectantly to hear more stories about me hometown, back in jolly old England. Aye, stories about my quaint and beloved Luton… a place I’d never been and knew very little about.

Even before we’d boarded the plane I was running on fumes and had just resorted to making things up about Luton (and Great Britain in general), but now that our flight had been further delayed, I had no choice but to just go and hide in a toilet stall. My plan was just to wait it out in the stall, until our plane started boarding again. But when our flight status changed from delayed to cancelled, and it became known that none of us would be leaving until the next day, it was clear I needed a new plan. I couldn’t sit on this lidless toilet for 7 hours. Could I?

My hope upon leaving the bathroom stall was that everyone on my flight had either dispersed for the evening or, at the very least, lost interest in me; but nope, when I came out, there they all were! In fact, word had gotten around, and during my time spent hiding, apparently a few of my biggest fans from earlier had somehow managed to find two excited passengers who had not only heard of Luton, but they had actually been there.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I think I might have actually said under my breath, as I was introduced to this terrific, worldly (statistically-improbable!) couple. Seriously, what are the odds.

And as you might have guessed, having visited lovely Luton just recently, these two people had very specific questions for me about my hometown. Rob had assured me that Luton was so small, they didn’t even print it on most maps, and yet, when the flight attendants overheard this new couple talking to me about Luton, they inexplicably got excited as well. Luton may have been small, but what Rob apparently failed to mention, was that AMERICAN AIRLINES HAD SOME SORT OF HUB THERE, so it couldn’t be that small, Rob. Thanks a lot, you twat!

After learning that one of the flight attendants had taken an extended training course in Luton and knew the town quite well (seriously?!) I had no choice but to politely excuse myself again, claiming an upset stomach, and I returned once more to the safety of my toilet stall. But things just kept going from bad to worse, as the next time I emerged, my new friends (and now also several flight attendants) had all rounded up some stomach medication for me. I pretended to be playfully horrified by the color of the pink liquid, as if I’d never seen or heard of it before—but in all honestly, I had no idea if that was the correct response. They were all eager to explain the American medicine to me, but Pepto-Bismal could have had a huge factory in Luton for all I knew. Maybe it was right next to the American Airlines training facility.

I felt like I was being punished, or like I was stuck in one of those after school specials about “Why Lying is Bad” or “Always Be Yourself.” Take your pick. Maybe it would be called, “The Boy Who Cried Luton” or something equally uninspired like that. With the way my luck was shaping up, I figured the only way it could get any worse is if Rob himself suddenly appeared from behind some curtain. “Hello, Ryan. Yes, why don’t you tell us all a little more about Luton!”

There’s no real lesson or moral to this story, at least not one that you probably can’t easily figure out yourself, but I fly quite regularly and it’s rare that I find myself in an airport without thinking about this story at least once. I think about how long I pretended to be asleep so I wouldn’t have to talk anymore, but mostly I think about how with all of today’s technology, I could have sat in that bathroom stall and in under 15 minutes learned enough about Luton to pass a citizenship test. I could probably pull up more information on my iPhone about Luton than most residents would know after living there a lifetime.

Oh! I guess there is one thing I learned that I could share with you, other than the obvious lesson of, “Don’t put on fake accents at the airport and pretend to be from a place you’ve never been…”

It’s that even though airports might seem like crazy, busy, places where chaos rules and no one is really paying attention to you, if you spend more than 30 minutes in a restroom stall at DFW, someone will eventually come and check on you (each time), and they will even politely insist that you open the stall door. So, I suppose that is good information to know, right?

“Open the stall door? Right-right-eo! Thanks for checking on me, Guv’nor! Nothing to see here, I’m just in here cleaning out me chimney, I am!”

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Update! You can read another story about this same English (ex) boyfriend of mine here: A PAIR OF ICELESS CHAPS.