Man or Mouse?

Borio is an officer in the military. A lanky, dark-skinned Egyptian with a sense of humor to boot, he hardly the kind of guy that you'd imagine would be in the military. However, he is a man by any standard.

The Hard Rock Cafe, which turns into a night club in the evenings, was noisy that night. I admit it. Anybody could have misunderstood the question that Borio posed to D.C. Borio was checking out a svelte, foreign girl across the room, trying to assess whether or not he should approach her. In a moment of self-doubt, he leaned over to D.C., and after explaining the situation, asked for her opinion.

In D.C.'s typically fearless fashion, she queried, "Are you a man or a mouse?" Then she promptly encouraged Borio to go and speak to the girl. He went to the bar and took a shot of tequila. Meanwhile, the man versus mouse question, complete with mental images, was swirling around in his head. "Surely," he thought to himself, "I am a man!" With a shot of liquid courage (or in this case, liquid stupidity), strengthening him, he marched up to the girl and preceeded to hit on her.

Suddenly, these three Egyptian men showed up and demanded to know why Borio was bothering their girl. As it turns out, Borio shouldn't have been so surprised. He had seen the three men with the young woman earlier. To their rude assertions, his only defense was to say, "What? Are you her brothers?" Of course, those were fighting words. But luckily, the bouncer came and kicked him out before anything happened.

The next day, D.C. and I met Borio in a coffee shop. He asked why D.C. had told him to approach a girl with three guy friends. She swore that she thought he had said the woman was with girl friends. Then she said, "What the heck were you thinking? You're the Egyptian! Shouldn't you have known that you can't approach a woman who is with another Egyptian man?"

Borio vigorously defended himself, maintaining that D.C. had told him to do the wrong thing. D.C. argued back stating that she had misunderstood the nature of the situation. After several minutes of that kind of back and forth conversation, Borio admitted that what it really came down to in the end was the image of the mouse running around in his head.