My taste buds, with age, have begun to change. Unfortunately, most aspects of my personality are a good lap or two behind. This realization surfaced last weekend, during a trip through the Sonoma wine country.
For dinner, we had a mighty fine meal at a Portuguese restaurant and drank a bottle of Portuguese wine -- a huge step for us. Getting to a point where wine has become palatable involved a year of really only drinking water with our meals. We were so addicted to carbonated beverages -- particularly Pepsi -- that we couldn't drink anything that wasn't as sweet.
Ordering a bottle of wine to go with dinner was a sad sort of accomplishment, but an accomplishment nonetheless.
The day after that dinner I was riding high from our Portuguese wine success. So I decided to press our luck and suggested that we should visit a winery for a tasting. Ben's response? He made a quiet little noise that sorted of sounded like agreement; he then choose to accidentally drive past each winery entrance.
"Oops," said Ben.
Since we had gotten through an entire weekend without fighting, I chose not to escalate and instead thought about what would happen if he did manage to make a turn-off into any of the handful of wineries along the way.
I can guarantee that this is exactly how our tasting would go:
Ben and I would enter, with me cowering behind. I would nudge him to go up to the counter and figure out what's the proper wine-tasting protocol.
He'd say no and tell me to go.
I'd return the anti-social volley and he'd give me the look and angry sigh.
It would be like two kids at a dance telling the other to approach the person they want to dance with. Neither one's going to do it and they're both going to look stupid in the process of deciding.
I would then get extremely frustrated and want to leave. As we'd walk out, I would change my mind and say that I can indeed handle the stress of being out of our element. On the way back in, I'd see some guy swirling his wine and looking all self-important. I would stare, trying to process the moment a person changes into the sort who swirls wine and talks about bouquets.
Ben would nudge me and tell me to stop making my mean face.
We'd then go up to the counter, stand speechless for a while and then realize that we don't like wine that much.
I would then write an inspired poem and wonder, why the hell I'm wasting my talents on software development.
I Can Stomach Fish Now Too
By Mena Trott, age 25
Mushrooms, wine, coffee and tea.
Don't take my youth away from me.
Instead of a "oh my, this bouquet is dripping
with a hint of oakey, strawberry sarcasm."
You get a "tastes good and it doesn't make me want to die."
