It's another beautiful and warm Sunday morning as I type this at the coffeehouse, prior to our weekly shopping excursion. We were lucky to find a coffeehouse close to where we now do our shopping and finally had the time to take advantage of this.
In a revelation which I'm sure will come as a big surprise (to no one), I have led a very sheltered life for the most part. My upbringing was nothing unusual, filled with safe foods, safe places to go, and by "safe" I meant things that were within the comfort zone of my parents. The most exotic restaurants I went to as a kid were the full-service (as that's all there was back in The Day) Chinese places. No weird spicy food for me, oh no. My early life was one big church supper -- same old thing over and over again.
I didn't have my first real forays into the larger world until I met Ms.
Darkstar. What followed were a whirlwind of wonderful and new tastes -- Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican (yes, Mexican, and NOT the stuff from a box!), all opening new doors to me and I thoroughly enjoyed each and every journey ... except for the one dish I ordered that was so heavily laden with cilantro that I remarked that it smelled and tasted like feet. I had wonderful sushi and
sashimi with friends in Washington state. New tastes and new experiences were opening to me. And I loved it.
This past Friday, however, Ms.
Darkstar and I took a trip far outside either of our comfort zones ... with a trip to a nearby
supermercado. There are places that, as soon as you pull into the parking lot, you automatically know you're the outsider. I think ours were the only Anglo faces in the entire store. Salsa music played from the loudspeakers, All the signage and even the food labels were in Spanish first. It was a little bit of a challenge for me to use what little food-related Spanish I knew to navigate our way through and get what we came for. But, you know what?
I loved it. And I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.
I've waited far too long to experience the new, the bold, the daring in my life, and short of anything that will cause me grievous bodily harm, I'm more than willing to give it a try. It may take a while for me to get the courage to actually do so, but what the hell ... I'm not getting any younger.
And, on that happy note, I'll close this edition of Sunday Coffee, and bid you all well until next time.