My old buddy The Marlborough Man is trying to get me into trouble

My relationship with horses has always been adversarial. I love the way the look—from a distance. Up close, they are, quite simply, too big. It’s only natural to feel some sort of discomfort around a creature that can—should the mood take it—stomp my head into the ground like a pat of warm butter.

I would feel the same way around an elephant, a hungry lion, or an enraged hippopotamus. My Neolithic ancestors didn’t live to adulthood by trying to pet the saber tooth tigers. Being a big fat chicken is an important part of my genetic makeup and key to my long-term survival strategy.

So when someone invites me to climb aboard a demented 1,200 pound quadruped with a skittish nature and hooves the approximate weight and size of a cement block, I am understandably reluctant.

Every so often, though, I wind up asking myself, “Mike, you aren’t going to let a little thing like a million years of evolution keep you from riding, are you? You’re braver and smarter than your cave-dwelling forbears, right? You can do this, can’t you? What are ya, a man or a mouse!?”

It’s at this point I usually tell myself to shut the hell up already.

At any rate, for whatever reason, I occasionally find myself on the back of some ornery glue factory reject possessed of a bad attitude and the full knowledge that there is an idiot perched on his back.

I’m thinking about this now because a while back I discovered that a friend—one I’d not seen in years—has purchased a small farm house, found himself a few horses, and somehow transformed himself into a store-bought, idealized version of a cowboy. Incredibly, he has even developed a southern accent and a taste for country & western music. This despite the fact he grew up in Detroit. When I saw him last back in the mid-90s, he was listening to Snoop Dogg, wearing a baseball cap backwards and apparently thought he was black. He’s not.

He’s not a cowboy, either, but these days he thinks he is. He’s traded his backward baseball cap for a Stetson. He wears pointy boots with little silver things on the toes. He shaves only every three or four days. He chews, as in tobacco! He looks like the Marlboro Man if the Marlboro Man had never actually ridden the range or roped cattle for a living, which come to think of it, he probably never did. The Marlboro Man was a model for a cigarette company and no more a “real” cowboy than is my buddy from Detroit.

But a while back, my bud invited me to visit his ranch. (Apparently, if you have a couple horses grazing in your backyard, your domicile is a ranch, not a house.) I might go, but if I do, he’s going to want to show off his horses, which will probably mean going for a ride on one of them. This always ends badly for me. Always.

But, really…what am I? A man or a mouse?

Squeak.

Give your new iPad or Kindle reader what it really wants; Mike Taylor’s book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available in digital format at Amazon.com. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.