I’m getting old

So I had a frightening realization tonight. I’ve become my parents.

After being home in the US for a few weeks this summer, I came back to a modestly stocked food pantry here in CC. Modest by 42 year old male standards. I had some noodles, and some cereal. I bought some fruit, meat, milk, and vegetables. And I had a bag of nacho chips and a jar of salsa. And beer. I’m sure all the men/boys reading this are thinking right now ‘modest, my keester. That’s a full-on party waiting to happen’.

Now nachos are not very common in Changchun (just cuz they’re crazy expensive and I’m Dutch and my wife wishes she was). Salsa is just as rare for the same reasons. So I decide to celebrate my ‘temporary bachelor status’ by breaking out the nachos and salsa. And a nice cold beer. I opened the can of salsa and the smell of Mexican goodness was immediate. Then I used a nicely shaped triangular nacho with no missing corners to scoop up a nice portion of salsa and enjoy.

Turns out that a bag of nachos does not maintain a certain ‘crispy freshness’ when left open for 6 or 7 weeks. The taste of the salsa was nice, but it was immediately overwhelmed by the dissatisfying ‘goo’ of a nacho bending between my teeth. I was in despair.

But then, as certain events as an adult are prone to do, I had to think back to my childhood. What did my parents do in this situation? They were Dutch (still are actually) and they would never throw away a 'perfectly good' ½ bag of nachos just because it was a little ‘wilty’. The solution came to me in a flash. Of course, the oven. You re-bake the chips at 350F for 15-20 minutes and they come out toasty hot and crispy (I think I stole those adjectives from KFC).

So in the oven go the tortilla chips. Down goes the beer. Out come the chips, into the salsa, and into the mouth. Of course all of us tend to have a ‘revisionist history’ of our childhoods. Apparently I am no different as I had completely forgotten how utterly and completely ineffective it is to re-bake tortilla chips. After my first bite, my memories came flooding back and I realized I never liked it when my mom tried to pass off the re-baked chips as ‘just about as good’ as the fresh ones. After I finished the bag of chips, I realized I too had accepted my parent’s philosophy. They weren’t any good, but they were good enough to not throw away.

I have officially become old enough to be my parents. I hope I can get to sleep tonight. And I'll just apologize now for the inevitable cold night in the fall of 2040 when one of my kids takes a bite of a stale nacho chip in their house and thinks, "what did my parents do when they had stale chips?" . . .