The Boomer and the Hard Shell Taco.
Your taco bellies your age.
Taco night at our Casa is a sign that the stress of managing a house and feeding adult children and spouses has become overwhelming, and I’m looking for a shortcut to placate whining and still serve something edible. It demonstrates that I care. Just a bit.
Tacos are that dish. Easy to make, easy to serve, easy to clan up afterwards. To my knowledge everyone in my house likes tacos. Or maybe doesn’t hate tacos, which is the same thing in my book.
When I think of a taco I think of being a kid in California and going with my parents to Del Taco and ordering a bunch of crispy shelled treats with beans, cheese, lettuce, and salsa. Emphasis on “crispy”. This was before we all were exposed to the culinary masterpiece of the street taco. Which is better because the ingredients are better. Not sure how that applies given that most street tacos I’ve seen are a wad of meat slapped into a smallish corn tortilla, wrapped and munched in a couple bites.
I ate a lot of Taco Bell tacos in college. Not because they were great, but because they were accessible. Taco Bell was open until the wee hours. A hungry college kid could walk up to the drive through window, order a pile of 50 cent tacos and spend the last part of the evening enjoying a fat/salt/tactile delight. Then I’d go home, lay down, and as soon as my head would hit the pillow and I would sleep soundly for 8 hours or so, waking up at 10:00 am refreshed.
At 57 if I tried to pull that trick today, eat a bag full of greasy tacos in the middle of the night… I shudder to think of the repercussions. Probably need an exorcist to purge the demons by about 3:00 am. And I’d still wake up at the usual 5:00 am. Habit.
Aging sucks.
I digress.
My turn to cook.
Grumble.
Tacos… I’ll make tacos. At the store I found a box of Ortega hard taco shells, plus the other stuff. Also, on a whim, bought a bag of taco sized soft tortillas. Mini-burritos if you will.
Cooking was uneventful. Had the protein, the cheese, the shredded lettuce, the chopped tomatoes, avocado (gourmet living n’est pas?) the taco shells. The hot sauce my sons like, stuff would raise blisters on rocks. Whatever.
All set… and “DINNER”, I screamed. That’s how we roll. The cook gets to scream, and people in earshot are supposed to be in their seats before the second hand makes another pass around the dial… that used to be the case anyway. Now that we’re all “adults” the dinner call seems to be the 10-minute warning, or the “now I’ll head the bathroom for a bit” call or “Ok only have time for one more game”…
Again, whatever. As an older parent now I’ve learned patience, which looks a lot like “whatever”.
Whatever.
And they gathered.
The looks around the table were awkward. Kids were looking at the food, looking at each other. When I was a kid my parents spoke Arabic between them when they wanted to discuss something about me, but were to lazy to step out of the room. My kids were apparently trying the same thing with telepathy and facial expressions. We have no empaths among us that I know of us. Mrs S is close, just try lying to her about something. She’ll see right through your soul. Maybe that’s not being an empath. Actually, I think that’s a gender linked trait.
Then they tried to hook my wife into the secret conversation. Seriously that was easily the loudest soundless conversation I’ve ever been privy too.
Well, against better judgement I decide to care. A bit.
“WHAT?” I asked, looking around the table.
They engaged: “What are these?”
“Tacos”
“No, the corn chip things?”
“Taco shells”
“We don’t have any tortillas?”
“We do, I forgot them.”
Which would have been a great time to simply say “copy that, kids out Father” and be done.
But nope, we can’t do that, we are Sankary’s.
“Why did you buy these”
This question was seriously asked as I was getting to make their dining experience a bit richer and more personal. But I didn’t get the question.
“Buy what?”
“These taco shell things”
Bit of an eye roll, and a bit of look on my part, “Because we’re having tacos?”
Then I put a bit of cooking oil on the fire, and lit a match “you want to eat the shit out of your hand, I suppose you can…”
“No, it just no one eats hard shell tacos, that’s kinda gross”
“I like them. Your mom likes them”
From my left: “No I don’t”
Shit, betrayal. At that point I stopped feeling safe at my own dinner table.
“Ok don’t eat’um”
“Ok Dad, just relax, JEEEZZ” which is their way of saying:
“Father, you are overreacting. What we are saying is that in the modern world, a world that you are finding increasing difficult to understand, humanity has moved past the idea of a stiff tasteless hard shell taco.” Pause “and you should too.”
Pause again
“Boomer”
BOOM!
Back the day, not the before times but even further back, think even more elusive memories, the before kids times. This was print media day. When a cartoon character was feeling a sudden emotional burst of rage back then, the experience was relayed to the reader with a clever graphic. Sometimes it was a bandaged thumb about to hit with a hammer, sometimes times a bulb horn being squeezed…
Sometimes a distinctive gentleman of a certain age being ridiculed by secret signs and messages.
The answer I came up with for this situation: get a mixing bowl, slide the tacos into the bowl, mash them up with my hands and announce “here, taco salad”.
Silence.
I’m getting beer. Anyone want one?
Here ya go I said as I dropped three Miller High Lifes on the table.
“Hmm” they asked, “what are those?”
Now I gotta explain macro-brews and beer that’s not bitter?
