Funniest Thing for July

Tell ITN about the funniest thing that ever happened to you while traveling in a foreign country. There are no restrictions on length. (ITN prints no info on destinations in the U.S., Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean.) The ITN staff will choose each month’s winner, who will receive a free one-year subscription to ITN. Entries not chosen cannot be acknowledged.

On a bus tour of Spain in the early ’70s, I was fortunate enough to have as a fellow traveler a delightful woman who just happened to be African-American. I knew we were going to get along when, at our first meeting, she smiled a huge, gap-toothed grin and explained that, upon landing in Spain, she had broken a front tooth in her bridge and, rather than try to hide it for the three weeks, she decided to just flaunt it. This showed me her incredible sense of herself and her humor.

Days later, after we had gotten even better acquainted, this wonderful lady had the seat right behind me as we rode through a particularly boring stretch of Spain. (You know the parts I mean — nothing to see for miles.)

It was getting pretty obvious that the guide had absolutely nothing of interest to point out, and I guess she thought we might be getting restless. Her solution was to point out the crops growing in the area. One happened to be cotton. At this point, the guide decided to offer us the opportunity to get off the bus to pick some of the cotton ourselves.

Somehow, this struck me as very funny. This was a pretty desperate attempt at entertainment under any circumstances. I turned to my companion and, trying not to laugh, started to make a remark about the exciting opportunity to pick cotton ourselves.

She stopped me in mid-sentence with, “Don’t even say it. There is no way you are getting me off this bus to pick any (blankety-blank) cotton. It took too many years for us to get on the bus in the first place!”

We never did pick cotton.