Ann's List

This is the phase of life when, if you’re not careful, you become more like yourself. And not in a good way. You always do this. You never do that. Everyone knows these things; you’re famous for certain quirks:

You never wear hats, they make you look short.

It’s not a vacation unless you head south.

No weird ingredients in the turkey stuffing; stick with the Pepperidge Farm recipe.

Horror fiction? The genre of arrested development.

Kung Fu movies? Forget it.

Crossword puzzles? Could there be a bigger waste of time?

Harmless prejudices all. Why not just indulge them? The clay has been hardening for years, after all, and who cares if you refuse to wear a hat. The problem is that unless you keep shaking yourself up, pretty soon you’re as set in your ways as a toddler who refuses to eat anything but food that is white. So maybe it’s time to rethink the turkey-stuffing thing, add some pine nuts. Rent Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Or whatever.

I've been rethinking my own personal "don't go there" list recently and have come up with a few things I might be willing to reconsider. Here's the short list:

1. Try Sudoku.

Despite urging from family members, I have avoided this craze on the grounds that it looks stupid, boring and hard. And it involves numbers.

2. Cook fish.

I like fish when prepared by others, and am constantly promising myself to put it on the home menu. So why don’t I ever get around to it? Truthfully, I think it’s because it feels too slimy – the rawest of raw ingredients. So I'm on the lookout for unintimidating recipes.

3. Read a Stephen King novel.

Horror fiction would not seem like the ideal reading material for someone who is so squeamish she closes her eyes at any hint of screen violence. (Thus I failed to see much of the final dinner scene in the Sopranos, even though nothing happened.) Yet one of my personal favorite American movies, Dolores Claiborne, was made from a Stephen King novel, so I sense that there may be many Stephen Kings. I'm researching which of his books would be best for a sensitive newbie, given that I’m willing to skim the scariest parts