The Popcorn Stand: No taste for acquired taste

Today’s Popcorn Stand is a follow-up to Thursday’s edition in which I wrote about how I’ve never understood the concept of smoking. Since Thursday was the Great American Smokeout, I thought that would be appropriate.

So far I’ve managed to offend some and as I continue on my lack of understanding of acquired taste, I may offend beer and coffee drinkers before I’m finished.

Among those who took exception was someone who called in response to my diatribe about how I don’t understand the concept of pipe smoking, noting Native Americans have used ceremonial pipes for centuries. I’ll just say my lack of understanding on how the pipe was created in the first place takes nothing away from the fact there’s nothing more sacred to Native Americans than the ceremonial pipe ceremony.

As far as acquired taste, there are a lot of things I’ve never developed a taste for, including alcohol and coffee. If I held an open beer container up to my mouth, it would make me gag.

I mean I could drink something like a Mike’s Hard Lemonade, but what’s the point of that? I’ll just drink lemonade.

The same goes for coffee. There are so many types of coffee now and so many ways to improve the way coffee tastes, again I just don’t get it. I’ll just drink hot chocolate.

Alcohol and coffee just taste too bitter to me. Maybe because I have such a sweet tooth. So instead of beer, I drink Coke. Instead of coffee, I drink hot chocolate.

With the danger of getting into the Coke vs. Pepsi debate (when a restaurant offers Pepsi instead of Coke, that’s fine with me), there’s nothing like the taste of Coke. It’s amazing.

Call it an acquired taste.

— Charles Whisnand