ON CHANGED OPINIONS

Flashback to 1998 or so; I am at an Olive Garden restaurant with a group of friends. We are likely celebrating someone's birthday. As I am a decidedly-unadventurous eater, I get a pizza and don't enjoy it. My rock-solid, iron-clad opinion is formed: The Olive Garden is a terrible restaurant.

The intervening years prove to be okay. The Olive Garden is referenced as a joke in various movies and TV shows (I feel like upper-class people think that lower-class people think it is an upper-class restaurant). I laugh along with these shows, as I am certain that Olive Garden restaurants serve bad food and probably also run illegal dogfights/prostitution rings in the kitchen area.

Late 2008: The FYE Friends and Family Day. I take a day off work to go shopping for myself and end up purchasing like 13 DVD's, all deeply discounted. Great. But for lunch, someone suggests the Olive Garden. I protest weakly, sure that this is an argument I will lose, as my friends ruthlessly try to expand my culinary horizons. We go to an Olive Garden restaurant. I opt for Chicken Gnocchi soup, No Dressing salad, and breadsticks. And they were all GOOD. I was stunned...here, I had eliminated this location (or chain of locations) from my life and had missed out on many opportunities to enjoy breadsticks.

Early 2009: I willingly go to the Olive Garden and order Chicken Parm-With-Alfredo-Instead-Of-Marinara and enjoy it. I also enjoy my leftovers the following day.

What do we learn from this? Number one, I am not treating my diet as I should, as Alfredo sauce is nutritionally similar to eating a tub of Crisco. Number two...tastes change. What I enjoyed at 19 or 20 is not necessarily what I enjoy now. I didn't care for Pearl Jam in high school because they were "too trendy." Now I have over 26 hours of Pearl Jam on my iPod. Heck, I am drinking ginger ale right now, and didn't try it for years because I accidentally drank some and didn't like it when I was like SEVEN years old.

Would I enjoy "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" if I read it again now, after not liking it at all when I read it in high school? Maybe.

Do I appreciate the Nightmare on Elm Street movies in a completely different way than I used to? Probably.

Should girls who didn't date me in high school or college or grad school call me up and take me out to dinner? Absolutely.