You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks

We have all heard and used the saying “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”  I myself have over used the phrase without giving it much thought.  But I am coming to realize that you can indeed learn new stuff along the way, no matter what your age.

Growing up in my house was pleasant, fun, contented. There wasn’t much in the way of surprises. There was a routine to things. Dinners out on Friday night to Abdow’s Big Boy which did incidentally did have a rather large “boy” sitting atop the restaurant roof. Sunday drives to what seemed to me like nowhere in particular but I am sure my mother or father had some destination in mind since we certainly weren’t following a GPS. 

And dinners were meat and potatoes, potatoes being the staple vegetable.  My dad loves peas but after an episode, of which I was oblivious because of my age, where he made my sister sit at the table until all the peas were eaten my mother never bought peas again. My sister still doesn’t eat peas but she eats many other things my father will not. 

As a child my diet consisted of cottage cheese, peanut butter and jelly and spaghetti, minus the stuff I referred to as “goobers” such as peppers, mushrooms and onions, basically the crux of a sauce, wouldn’t you say? My palate did not like nor appreciate anything with flavor or texture.  

I did love pizza and holidays were perfect with mashed potatoes and gravy and turkey and corn. Corn was the other staple vegetable in our house. This added some color to the plate but not much.

So imagine my surprise when my father recently told me he had eaten hummus and tabouli. You ask how does a man go from eating steak and potatoes for as long as I have known him to trying things like hummus and tabouli? 

The answer is simple. He met a nice woman who eats hummus and practices yoga, things that a year ago my father would have probably found pretty foreign. But with new people come new experiences and it proves the “old dog “theory isn’t really all that true. Of course he may not appreciate being referred to as an “old dog” but it is how the saying goes. 

In my twenties, I started work as a contract nurse. I would work in a hospital that was short staffed for about three months and then move on to another hospital somewhere else. It was a great way to see parts of the country I had never been to and a chance to meet people who were not born-and-bred New Englanders.  It was during my time in New Jersey that I worked with a nurse who was from the Philippines. She introduced me to sushi and some other fabulous foods that she would bring to work.  

Now a few years prior to this, I might not have been so adventurous but something about travelling and meeting new people sparked an interest in food beyond my rather bland tastes. While living in Arizona, a taste for Mexican food flared. And I even found a taste for grits and collard greens while living in South Carolina. My own tastes evolved over time and as rooted as I can be in what is comfortable I have managed over the years to branch out and welcome new tastes, new ideas and new adventures. 

Life is really too short not to.

My father’s fiance had emailed me recently with a little update and informed me my father had taken care of her dog while she was at work, even scooping the you know what with a little blue bag. Really, this is a bit much to take in. Growing up we only had a cat by default. Friends of my parents showed up on Christmas Eve with a black and white kitten wrapped in a red bow. 

There was no going back. We never had a dog even though I am pretty sure my sister begged for one until college.

Age is irrelevant when it comes to shifting your interests, trying something new or taking up a new hobby. You can be young and never try anything but peanut butter and jelly. My dad is eating hummus and wearing sandals. He is walking a dog and scooping poop. It doesn’t have anything to do with age. It has to do with where life takes you and how you decide to enjoy the ride.   

Of course, I think if we put a plate of steak and potatoes in front of him and a plate of hummus, I am going to go out on a limb and say he is going straight for those potatoes.  But then I still love cottage cheese and if you put a plate of turkey and mashed potatoes in front of me a smile would spread and I would ask for the corn and gravy.