“I’m going to need you at the Mickey D’s on State Line Road at 11 a.m., and I’m going to need you to bring cash,” I told my boyfriend late Friday night.

Anyone who so much as attempted to fly out of Bush Intercontinental airport for the long Fourth of July weekend — especially out of the dreaded Terminal B, “the middle child” of IAH — can attest to what a madhouse it was. People slept in the terminal hallways, stranded pregnant women sobbed, and the tiny kiosk at my doomed cul de sac of Express Jet gates stayed open well past close, selling off flats of beer and hard alcohol to soften the ire of homesick passengers.

I had been scheduled to fly out at 7:15 to Kansas City for a weekend at the lake, but my flight got repeatedly delayed. By the time it was finally canceled because, though the plane had made it, its crew had not, there were 40 people on standby and no flights out until Monday morning.

I had been trolling around IAH for three and a half hours. I’d shared several 20 oz. beers with a senior’s group headed back to Biloxi, Miss., from a Canadian tour and had a Red Bull Vodka in my hand at the ticket counter, prepared to fight for my refund when I heard it: “You don’t understand. I’ve got to get to KC for my niece’s baptism. I’m about ready to just rent a car and drive there.”

I leapt forward to make an introduction that would lead to an adventure. “HI I’M CAROLINE I’LL SPLIT IT WITH YOU!”

The woman I had ambushed was Mollie, one of nine children in an Irish Catholic family from Michigan who took their baptisms very seriously. She said she’d been talking to a middle-aged couple on their way back from Cozumel who were eager to get back to their dogs in Kansas City. We’d find them and see if they wanted in.

They did, and within 45 minutes, Mollie, Jim & Vicky and I were in a rented Dodge Charger on the open interstate, laughing at our impulsiveness and counting on the abilities of TSA to adequately screen the other three of us for weapons.

There has been some study of the depths people divulge to each other on airplanes. I’m here to witness; those researchers have got nothing on the stories that are swapped between three strangers on a 12-hour road trip.

Torrid same-sex love affairs, prison, suicide, murder, vision quests in the Appalachians — it was all covered. You might not think so much material was buried in the lives of a writer, a chiropractor, a CO2 salesman and his common-law wife, but then you’d be sorely mistaken.

No sooner had the jokes about which of the four of us was most likely to murder the other three subsided enough to allow nervous slumber than we were pulled over. The cop was no run-of-the-mill traffic cop, though — he was a Dallas narcotics officer, and as soon as the driver declared during her field sobriety test that she didn’t know her passengers, things began looking understandably suspicious.

We were sequestered and questioned, and the car was searched. (Funny how sure we all were no one had anything, when we couldn’t be sure at all). Our answers, of course, matched up, and the policeman brought us together for a final word.

“I have never, in my 10 plus years as an officer, heard a story so absurd that I have no choice but to believe it.”

And with that, we were on our way. Eight hours later I was hugging my new friends goodbye (I’ve got a dinner date with Jim & Vicky when I’m back in November) as my boyfriend incredulously doled out cash for my share of the rental and gas and, presumably, my safe delivery.

Moral of the story: I might not be the mushiest broad, but the next time the boyfriend questions my loyalty, seriousness or effort — he can read this and weep.