There's this weird thing that happens as you get older – your tastes change. Your food, your clothing, your politics – your parents tell you it's going to happen, but you don't believe them.
For me, quite literally, my tastes changed. I remember as a child, arguing with my parents that I would never, in my lifetime, eat things like black olives, plums, or avocados. I also recall that for some reason my father regularly tried to get me to eat these things I knew I didn't like. He knew I didn't like them, too. He seemed, however, to think on any given night that "just one bite" would change my mind.
"Just one bite," he'd say. "You'll like it." Really? Did I like it last night? Have I ever liked it? No, and I won't ever like it, so please stop asking me to try it. "Just one bite, it's really good." No, it's not – it's really not.
For years I happily went through life enjoying the absence of things like black olives, plums, and avocados. Then the strangest thing happened. A couple years ago I was out with friends and someone ordered pizza and there wasn't any pizza that didn't include toppings I hated. I was desperate and ravenous. I ate a piece with black olives.
And I liked it.
The next night I picked up a sandwich at Subway. I decided to do a little further research – perhaps the pizza and olive incident was an unrepeatable fluke. I ordered black olives on my sandwich.
And I liked it.
I went home and emailed my mother. "I think I like black olives," I wrote her. "Does this mean I'm an adult?"
Recently I had similar experiences with both plums and avocado. I have hated both with a passion my whole life. I think the plum hatred comes from eating one with a bug in it as six year old. I'm not sure. It might have just been that the mushy texture of the plum behaved as what I imagined a bug in one's mouth would. Avocado hatred, I think I was born with.
Yet, there I was, standing in the grocery store, staring at the bins of plums and thinking, "I wonder what would happen if I tried one?" Turns out I like them. And the avocado, too.
There was one occasion that my dad would say, "Just one bite." He did this every time we had fish. "It doesn't taste fishy, I swear." Really? Is it fish? Well, then yes, by definition, it tastes fishy.
I'm a bit nervous I might end up liking fish. I'm pretty vested in fish being disgusting. I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I turned out to like it. It would be cause for serious personal reassessment.
I almost got the urge a few weeks back to try a bite of a friend's fish dinner. Then, before I could ask, I caught one whiff of that horrible smell and was cured. I definitely will never like fish. I could be 103 and I am positive I will never like fish. So, perhaps, while the black olives signaled some sort of transformation into adulthood, I will cling to my grade-school palette in other aspects.
I read once that as we age our taste buds die off and things that tasted strong to us as children no longer have such bitter potent flavors. This was the explanation for why our tastes literally change as we age.
I think something similar must explain certain older women's mode of dress – that their sense of taste has somehow numbed and become unaware. You know the ones. They wear the mismatched clothing and the too tight, too short, or too trendy items. They wear things they should have stopped wearing years ago and make me shudder and think, oh, is it really going to move that direction someday?
I, personally, would like to age gracefully. Sometimes I think I would like to eventually be one of those smartly dressed old women with the ironed pants, the button up shirt, and the long straight gray braid of hair. I think they're mostly librarians.
There are two problems with that scenario, however – I don't have straight hair, and I'm not even sure I know what color it truly is at this point.
But those women, the ones who do not age gracefully, the ones who seem not to know how old they are – they intrigue me. Do they look in the mirror? Do they just not know? And how do I know? How do I know when it's time to put away the mini-skirts and black leather knee high boots? Who draws the line between cougar and old maid, and is it so fine that one might not know when she has crossed it? And will anyone tell me?
Or will it happen one day that my tastes just change. Will I stand before my closet, like the plums in the grocery store, and think, maybe I shouldn't wear that leopard print mini-skirt anymore. Instead, I'll be serving dinner at four o'clock in my orthopedic shoes, eating broccoli and fish.
Or will I cling to it proudly, like my distaste for fish and be the "crazy old lady in the mini-skirt." At least the knee high boots would cover any old-lady cankles.
Have your tastes changed? Will you age "gracefully"?