#1102 Old-itude

It’s funny how one’s perception of old-itude keeps changing as one gets older.
I was talking to someone the other day who was talking about “cougars” and I didn’t know what he meant. He explained that “cougars” were older women who hit on younger men. Like older men that hit on younger women are lechers, or lounge lizards, or just plain hound dogs, the older woman who pursues younger men now has a mascot.
But it will make it easy next Apple Cup. If someone starts telling a joke about a Rubenesque older woman hitting on a younger man at a football game it’ll be a Husky Cougar joke for sure.
But it is funny the words and things that seem to denote age. When I was a kid, I grew up in a town that was a haven for snowbirds and retirees. So I was pretty certain only old people drove this one type of car—the Oldsmobile.
It made sense to my young kid mind. Particularly since the only folks I ever saw driving Oldsmobiles were squinty-eyed blue-hairs barely peeping over the giant steering wheels. 4 tons of Detroit steel and Mrs. Magoo. It kept me quick on my feet.
Speaking of old things and words. The other day someone asked me to try an heirloom tomato. As she was someone I care for, I put aside my initial repulsion at the idea and tried it. Turns out heirloom doesn’t have to mean dried out doilies stinking of powdered lilac. I expected a tomato that was maybe a little musty. Like the inside of a slowly decaying jewelry box—reeking of mildew, or formerly wet but now dry and fungal-encrusted crushed velvet.
But actually, the tomato was quite delightful. Not unlike the young lady that gave it to me. It’s heirloom qualities were exactly that, the quality you would expect from when they made things good.
But I wasn’t sure what I saw the other day when I went past a butcher shop that called itself Heritage Meats. What, pray tell, is a heritage meat?
Yeah I’ll have the historical ham-hock please, and, oh yeah, throw in a chunk of that antique pork loin...
America, ya gotta love it.