You say tomato…



It’s funny how as you get older, your tastes in everything changes. Well, I don’t know if “changes” is the right word, but maybe you just notice things that you didn’t notice before.

For instance, the older I get the more I like farm fresh tomatoes, documentaries, and Bob Seger music. Good God, just reading that sentence back to myself makes me want to go put on a pair of khaki slacks and pull them up to my chest like old men do. But it’s true.

I was eating at a restaurant the other day (can’t even remember where) and they served a couple of slices of tomato on the side of the plate, almost like a garnish.

I sprinkled a little salt and pepper on them, and they were so good I made a comment to the waitress about them. She told me that the owner of the restaurant gets most of the vegetables from a Farmer’s Market or something like that, to make sure that everything is fresh and chemical free. I couldn’t get over how good that damn tomato was. I’m pretty sure that if she brought the whole thing out, I would have eaten it like an apple.

Documentaries are the same way to me now- I can’t get enough of them. When I was younger I thought they were too slow and boring. Now that I’m 3-, I mean, 29 years old, they seem more interesting to me.

Maybe the film makers are just getting better, I don’t know. But lately I’ve watched documentaries on everything from the breakdown of companies like Enron, to young soldiers in Afghanistan trying to cope with what they are going through, to a hillbilly family in West Virginia that will leave you feeling better about your own family.

And Bob Seger? That was an unexpected gem. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up in a bar so I’ve always known about Bob Seger. It’s just that I had forgotten how much I liked him. Or maybe never really listened to the words of his songs. It could just be that I’m at the age where the words of his songs are more relevant.

All I know is that I can’t listen to “Night Moves” without getting misty-eyed and remembering my youth, which happens to be slipping away at the speed of light lately.

Every now and then I have a little down time at work. When I do, I’ll pull out my phone and either watch a movie on Netflix or listen to Pandora radio, where I came across my new –found love for Seger music.

It’s ironic to me that something so new and high-tech as the iPhone 4 could be so helpful in making you appreciate something as “old-school” as documentaries and music from the ‘70s and ‘80s. I can even watch a baseball game on there, which is something else I love more and more now that I’m old.

Now if I could just get it to grow tomatoes for me.



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