After two Pig F*&kers, a Beast, a Hobgoblin and a Leffe the night before, I was alright with taking it easy. It wasn’t the storybook Friday night you’re supposed to have in England, but we took it as it was.

Of course, I might’ve had the least to drink the night before, stopping well short of trying to fall asleep in a bush like one of my friends. So it was understandable when I had a little bit of jump in my step the next morning as we explored the parts of Canterbury that weren’t pubs.

Cardboard cones filled with chips, cheese scones and discovering there’s a clothing line called “bench:” concluded a pretty solid day. But cobblestone streets are hell on your ankles and some of us were only a night separated from sleeping in a Victoria Station. We ended up not forcing the night, choosing close friends over crowded pubs.

But after the others had gone to bed, I found myself still too wired. I decided I’d go for a walk, taking a “litre” of British lager with me, leaving the all-too Puffton-like maze of Park Wood for the bus stop near Keynes College. My friend Sami says she wants to take a picture of the view every time she goes there, so I figured I’d see what it was like in the night time.

The stop itself is a couple lighted shelters with a pair of homeless-proof thin benches. But across the way, there’s a clearing that gives a perfect view of the Canterbury skyline: buildings of old stone blending with new steel and glass, dominated by an illuminated Canterbury Cathedral.

Not wanting to feel like a bum, I looked around for a better vantage point, spotting an old stone bench on the hill behind the stop. Upon reaching the summit, I turned, sat, opened my bottle of Golden Champion, turned on my iPod and thought, “this kind of sucks.”

Though I wanted to believe it was the kind of night that comes to mind when you think of going to Europe – but it wasn’t. It was bland, boring and forced, though I did it to make a point.

Under the right circumstances, any story can sound good, as long as you can tell it right. I knew that, in the right context, all those things I did the night before would sound kind of cool but in reality, my friends were asking me why the hell I did that.

My low-key English evening is an example that by following a few simple rules, you too can make a boring story sound like one of those pretentious study abroad stories that people are always telling.

Step one: Laid-back confidence, preferably with a drink.

The point of journalism is story-telling. Part of that story-telling is to make things sound interesting, make it a good story that people will listen to. Unfortunately, that privilege can be abused to hype up clichéd moments like that time you sat back and drank a beer. That’s because most people want to have that moment at some time but never really get a good chance. Although it rarely lives up to the hype, depicting the moment in the right tone just makes it sound cooler.

Also, the only time the phrases old friends, good friends or close friends are used in a story with no mention of what actually happened with said friends is to make a story sound cooler. No one wants to hear about how my friends and I spent the night watching “Aladdin” and “The Departed” in succession on someone’s laptop – which brings me to step two.

Step two: Leave out the boring parts.

During the course of the story, I may or may not have gotten lost two or three times because I forgot to actually bring the beer the first time I left the apartment. Remember that skyline I mentioned? It was there, but I couldn’t see any of it because the cathedral isn’t lit up at 1 a.m.

Step three: Be in Europe.

Europe is story-telling cruise control for cool. Even if the story isn’t that good, there’s still the trump card of saying, “Oh, you wouldn’t get it. You’ve never been to Canterbury.” If this story was set on the hill behind Van Meter, no one would care. There are at least three kids doing that right now. Go and check. I’ll wait.

Step four: Keep it short.

This is a mistake that my former roommate Jake would always make when he told a story. He would tell a story about the time he took part in the rescue of a garden gnome from a frat house – like he was writing a screenplay.

Step five: Drop names like it’s going out of style.

You want to know what’s in a Pig F*&ker, don’t you? (Two shots cherry vodka, two shots melon vodka, pineapple juice and sprite, we think.) Just naming cools things that people haven’t heard of makes a story more interesting. Victoria Station, Keynes College, Canterbury and drinks nobody’s heard of sound better than, the Haigis Mall bus stop, the Townhouses and a 30-rack of Busch light.

Of course, there’s the off-chance that I sounded like another pretentious study abroad kid. But I’m done with classes for the semester, so I can deal with it.

Nick O’Malley is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].