Stewed Prunes and Other Delights

On Liking What I Like

I like stewed prunes.

There, I said it. You can wheel me off to the memory care wing now.

A trio of friends and I cycled a chunk of Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way earlier this summer. There were delightful accents, cliffs, whisky, beer, and lots of laughing. Uncontrollable fits of laughter.

And stewed prunes.

I know food stylists, but none will admit knowing me.

Breakfast was provided at every hotel. Porridge served with stewed prunes was on each menu. I liked the meal well enough that when I came home, I bought some prunes and developed my own little recipe. I have them over steel-cut oats a couple of times a month. And they make me think of riding with friends. And yes, they do all the other things you think they’d do.

No, I Don’t Need Help Taking These to My Car

I’ll turn sixty in a couple of months, and I fully embrace my age. If the Kroger check-out lady wants to give me the seniors discount without checking my i.d., she can go right ahead. But I do resent the law that makes me pull out my i.d. to buy a six-pack when I clearly look like I was an active participant in the last century.

I’m no spring chicken, and I sure as hell don’t want anything to do with being young in this era.

Here’s the thing: youth culture is, as they say, cringe. It always has been and always will be, but it practically unbearable these days. Whenever I get a glimpse of it, I feel the need to avert my eyes, just in case the abyss is gazing back. There seems to be nothing but madness there.

Mom Jeans and Dad Jokes

Social media has amplified all the worst things about being young. There seems no measure of success other than attention. And how attention is attained is of no importance. But we suddenly care when this nonsense gets catapulted into our consciousness while we’re scrolling. And when it does, it makes us adjust our aim. We lose our way because the abyss is calling us by name.

But the trick isn’t ignoring what the cool kids are doing, it’s outwitting our own judgment. Whereas the younglings make fun of unhip clothes and music because they want to be arbiters of fashion, those approaching retirement are worried that one blue-plate special is going to send them down a slippery slope to senility. Soon, we’ll be cashing in the Birthday Club free buffet reward at the Golden Corral.

Don’t do it. Sometimes, bad food is just bad food.

The real joy is finding the things that are a pleasure that we think makes us old. In denying our aging process, we sometimes deny ourselves things that we think only old people do. Like stewed prunes.

And $60 jeans without ragged holes pre-installed. (Distressed jeans seem like some sort of ecological crime to me. To manufacture a perfectly good pair of pants and then abuse them so badly they won’t stand up to the wash machine more than a few times. And do not ask me to distinguish between a standard pair of Levi 501s and $350 worth of selvedge denim.

Also, give me comfortable shoes. And a warm cardigan sweater.

Oh, wait. I’m being told that Taylor Swift has proclaimed cardigan sweater cool. That leaves me in no man’s land on that issue. Also, it turns out that a 1976 El Camino is very cool. I happen to know, through extensive first-hand research, that driving an El Camino in the 80s not make one cool.

Honestly, I’m more bothered by the things that make me retroactively cool than the things that make me uncool.

In some ways, it makes sense that the identity issues that plagued us in high school plague us again as we approach retirement. Work and family have occupied all of our time for so long that when the work ends and the nest is empty, we struggle to say who we are outside of those roles. Suddenly, that Golden Corral birthday dinner looms like an open casket. And anything that looks like it sends us fleeing.

But those things don’t make us old. The way we engage in the world does. When we become rigid and fixed in our thinking, we’re doomed. When we engage our surrounding with curiosity, we are still capable of adventure. The way forward is to stay open.

Even to stewed prunes.

Oh—and try them with some orange peel, a cinnamon stick, and a dash of vanilla. Take that, you pumpkin spice fiends!

Song of the Week

Speaking of sounding like an old fogey, here’s the signature song from what is probably the most iconic American album (cover) of the 60s.

I considered doing a photo shoot of myself covered in prunes, but Mi Esposa talked me out of it.
These days, hearing Herb Albert makes you think that it’s time for a Dating Game rerun, but the man was a force to be reckoned with once upon a time. He even wrote a hit for Sam Cooke. Then founded A&M records, which had a hit or two over the years. It’s really a miracle what a little whipped cream can do.