No preface, just a link to the series introduction and previous adventure.
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You just got back from a long day of flying supplies into the military area of responsibility (AOR). On the way back to your lodging you pass a group of fellow officers and pilots who are sitting outside near a BBQ grill, laughing, smoking and drinking. As you draw near, they call out your name and invite you to join them. You were planning to relax in your room, but you decide to shoot the breeze with them for awhile and maybe strengthen some of the friendships you have just started building with the guys.
However, after just a few minutes you notice that most of the conversations are more or less sunk in the gutter. Everyone has that bleary-eyed look about them that comes from having consumed more than a moderate amount of alcohol. You begin to think that your presence there is only counter-productive, but as you start to get up to leave one of the more inebriated fellows notices your empty hands and insists that you get a drink. He offers you some beer or, better yet, a couple shots of whiskey. At first you refuse, but his persistence grow stronger and louder the more you try to reject his offer. Soon everyone is gathered around you, chanting for you to take a drink. You are having flashbacks to your high school Life Skills class on peer pressure.
It strikes you as ridiculous that a group of grown men, half of them probably your seniors by at least ten years, are trying to pressure you into doing something that you politely declined. They have no idea why you refused the drink in the first place: it may have been because you weren’t feeling well, or because you had some work to get done later on that required the full use of your mind, or maybe you don’t drink for religious reasons, or perhaps you simply don’t feel like having a beer. Nevertheless, it has become something of a point of honor in their mind to get you to have a drink.
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Do you pacify the mob by tossing back a shot? What would that sort of compliance under pressure say to them about your character? Would it say anything at all? Do you stand your ground and continue to refuse? If you refuse, how do you explain your course of action to them? Do you even bother trying? Why would you refuse?
