People here like to offer me strange, exotic fruits from time to time. In the Philippines, I notice there are many curious varieties, stuff I never even dreamed of: lonzones and atis and mangosteen and jackfruit, rambutan and santol and starfruit and dragon fruit…
I occasionally try these exotic fruits when offered, but I notice, as I get older, that sampling new fruit just doesn’t appeal to me that much.
And it isn’t because some of these fruits are not yummy; I’ve enjoyed sweet, juicy lonzones and rambutan and strips of luscious jackfruit on occasion. I just don’t go seeking them out that much. My thinking is: if these fruits were such a big deal, I would have heard about them much earlier in my life. They would be up there with bananas and oranges and apples.
Of course, this also has a lot to do with fruit marketing. There’s a fruit hierarchy, and it doesn’t necessarily have to do with inherent fruit value. Many fruits and vegetables thrive beyond their gustatory qualities. Who would have guessed there would be a global avocado industry, for instance, or that the world couldn’t get along without guacamole dip for its corn chips? And certainly the watermelon is some kind of freak of nature, popular or not.
No, when someone says “fruit,” I mentally picture an apple, a banana and an orange. If pressed — if there were a Luger pointed at my head by some kind of Fruit Mafia goon type — I could mentally summon up a pineapple, some cherries, maybe even some blueberries. But never a persimmon.
I know: this makes me sound like a fruit bigot. But not really, because I’m not prejudging the exotic fruits on offer; I try them, usually. Then I move on.
I think what it’s about is that I’m no longer fructo-curious.
True, I’m less curious about a lot of things in life. As you get a bit older, you become less interested in exotic new species of indie cinema, for instance, like mumblecore. You have less tolerance and patience for foreign cinema and subtitles. Subtitles are a lot of work. So, indeed, is understanding other cultures. You prefer to allow the artlessness of Hollywood to wash over you, like a tsunami of guilty pleasure.
Also, since having a kid of my own, I’ve noticed my interest in kids’ movies — especially those in 3D or involving digital animation — has dropped to zero. This is odd, because I loved cartoons and animation as a kid. Could it be that the joy of watching cartoons somehow magically transfers to your children, leached out of your body for good when you become a parent?
New TV shows rarely tempt me either, even if people are raving about how great they are, and how you have to start watching this show now! Really? You mean, I have to acquaint myself with a whole new set of fictional characters and family members? Now? Why? Can’t I just live my own life?
Change itself was a somewhat less demanding ordeal when I was growing up. There weren’t 50 types of phones to choose from; there was just “the phone.” Board games were the perennial Monopoly, Clue and Battleship. And celebrities didn’t hatch and die like fruit flies every two days, demanding our constant attention; they stayed around for a long, long time. Some of them, like Abe Vigoda, never went away.
And it’s probably crotchety to say so, but I don’t like having to act excited about a new version of the iPad or iPhone every year. What’s the big deal? What’s wrong with the old one?
Even the thrill of travel becomes less appealing. When you’ve seen the inside of a hundred airport waiting lounges and spent countless hundreds of minutes inside a hundred different air cabins, it has to be a very exceptional destination indeed to rouse you from a comfy armchair.
I know what you’re thinking: this sounds like someone who is no longer interested in new life experiences. Someone who’s stuck in a rut. Someone who is not a thrill seeker. Well, if “thrill seeker” means leaping out of an airplane with a pack of silk cloth strapped to my back, or rubber bands attached to my ankles atop a bridge somewhere, then yes, I am not in the market for death-courting activities. Let death come a-courting on its own, in its own sweet time, thank you.
And if seeking thrills means trying fruits that add little to my collective life experience of fruit, then I’ll pass.
Some people believe the opposite. They will claim that, as you get older, after you’ve sampled so many exotic foods in life, you can only get your rocks off, palate-wise, with something truly nasty — some kind of fruit that should never have been hatched from its stinky slumber and harvested in the first place, like durian. I thank the gods that I’m not old enough to appreciate durian, and probably never will be. If I ever develop the desire to shovel chilled, gooey lumps of rotting compost into my aging chops, it will probably be because I’ve lost the ability to smell and taste food altogether. So durian is another exotic fruit that wasn’t on my Christmas wish list.
But then again, who knows? Something might still surprise me. Maybe I just haven’t tried the right fruit yet.