I’ll relate this because it’s the story most requested by my friends.

In 1996, my wife (let’s call her Angelina Jolie) and I went to Interlaken, Switzerland, to visit her parents.  Her dad, a long-time employee of McDonnell Douglas, had been temporarily placed there as a consultant to the Swiss Air Force.

Neither of us had been to Europe, and it was beautiful.  We even went paragliding off the Alps.

One day, we drove north to Bavaria and took a day to visit Munich.  We later checked into a hotel in Garmisch, Germany.

That night, Angelina and I decided we needed a break from her parents and went out to find some bars.  We had no idea where we were going and just walked around.  We found a couple of taverns, but they didn’t seem to have the right “feel.”

Then we found a pretty cool place.  They were playing decent rock; the crowd was younger and most of them spoke English.

We sat at the bar. I was drinking local brews and Angelina was drinking vodka tonics.  One guy asked where we were from.  When I told him, he said, “Ah, America.  In America they have Budweiser.”  Everyone around the bar laughed.  I always suspected Bud was an international joke.

We drank.  A lot.  And laughed.  A lot.

Several hours passed, and we were hammered.  I was having trouble focusing.  Angelina rushed off to the bathroom and puked.  We finally left the place and stumbled back to the hotel.

In the lobby, she again rushed to the john and vomited. We made it upstairs to the room, where her parents were sleeping (the room had two queen-sized beds).  We weren’t too quiet when we entered.  Angelina kept rambling to her mom about how she had to buy tampons the next day.  I stripped off my clothes, threw them in the corner, and passed out in the bed.

The next thing I heard was my ultra-conservative really-uptight mother-in-law’s shrill voice:

“Gary!  Gary, goddammit, you’re pissing all over your clothes!”

I snapped awake.  Sure enough, I was standing in the corner of the room, pissing all over my pile of clothes.  I guess I thought I was in the bathroom.

I staggered to the toilet, finished my business, and crashed back into bed.

I don’t know what was worse the next morning – my debilitating hangover or having to hear what a drunken idiot I was the entire ride back to Interlaken.