Advice to the Young

One of the world's most celebrated writers has much to share—though she sometimes wonders whether she should keep her thoughts to herself

- By Margaret Atwood

What advice would I give the young? I have trouble answering this question. Here's why.

Just before Christmas I was in a cheese store, purchasing some cheese, when a very young man of oh, say, between 40 and 50-entered, manifesting bewilderment. His wife had sent him out to get something called “meringue sugar, with strict instructions to buy no other kind, and he didn't know what the stuff was and couldn't find it, and nobody in any of the shops he'd so far wandered into had any idea either.

He didn't say this to me. He said it to the cheese shop person. She too appeared to be without a clue as to the meringue sugar mystery. None of this was any concern of mine. I could have—should have-simply pursued my own personal goal of cheese acquisition. Instead I found myself saying: “Don't buy icing sugar; that isn't what your wife wants. What she probably wants is something like fruit sugar or berry sugar, which is sometimes called powdered sugar but it isn't really powdered. It's a finer grind than ordinary white sugar, though you'll have a hard time finding it at this time of year. But really, ordinary white sugar works just fine for meringues as long as you beat it in very slowly. I use it all the time myself, and it helps if you add just a tiny bit of cream of tartar and maybe a half teaspoon of white vinegar, and ...”

At this point my daughter-who'd succeeded in identifying the required cheese-got me in a hammerlock and a dragged me over to the cash register, where a line was building.

“The white vinegar, not the brown!” I called in closing. But I was already appalled at myself. Why had I spewed out all this unasked-for advice to a complete stranger, albeit a helpless and confused one?