I opened my lunchbox at work and someone asked me what kind of sandwich I was packing.

"Ham and Swiss with hot mango mustard," I said.

The person I spoke to, 30 years younger than me, looked at me oddly. I bring baloney sandwiches to work, maybe deviled ham, tuna salad.

"Oh, yeah," I said. " I'm casual about mangoes now."

I was proud, an old pooch with a new trick.

This isn't to say I grew up in a house with no fruit. My mother bought apples, pears, sometimes strawberries. My father made a good strawberry shortcake. It was through my father that I learned to respect real whipped cream.

But there was no mango-munching in my home. A banana was as exotic as we got, well, that and canned pineapple.

Maybe if I married earlier in life, my world might have gotten bigger faster but I was single into my early fifties and I ate a lot of canned spaghetti. I still like a nice canned pasta on a cold night.

Once married, I ignored the parade of strange fruit that came into our kitchen. I passed by the papayas on the counter, not so much unwilling as puzzled.

"What is this?" I'd say to my wife, holding up some spiny oddly colored produce of a hot, foreign land.

The mango first crept into a cold noodle and shrimp salad, which I ate, noting to myself that he flesh of a mango looks like the flesh of a peach. The mango next invaded a green salad.

It's not a bad thing, a mango, and when the hot mango mustard came home, I became casual about mangoes.

I'm proud of it, too. People in my office are always talking about raw kale and quinoa. Sometimes I have never even heard the words before.

How big a change is this for me?

A number of years ago, someone in my office said we should all consume more olive oil.

So, every morning, when I woke up, I would pour a shot glass full of olive oil, bang it down like a shot of straight whiskey and then have coffee.

About six weeks in, I told one of the women in my office what I'd been doing.

"You're not supposed to drink it; you're supposed to cook with it," she said, "Also, I don't know how you can do that without throwing up."

I was embarrassed, and I quit drinking straight olive oil.

A week later, I told my 75-year-old mother what happened.

"One of the women at work said she didn't know how I could drink a shot glass of olive oil with throwing up," I told Ma.

My mother took this as an insult to her son.

"You tell her my son can drink ANYTHING if it's in a shot glass," she said.

The family honor was saved.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.