Welcome to the Finer Things Club! If it helps, there won’t be a pop quiz about Angela’s Ashes.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: sometimes my wife Anne and I find excuses to leave the house for fun besides comic-cons, road trips, movies or extra groceries! It isn’t often, but we’re open to the concept. It beats doomscrolling in our comfy chairs. We’d venture out more often if we were invited, but we aren’t into sports or alcohol, which tend to be the only incentives that 98% of Americans offer or respond to in laboratory tests. Sure, we could invite other folks out on our own terms, which Anne has been known to do on selective occasions, but as a lifelong introvert, I’m not one for taking the initiative, not even if you pass me some on a serving tray and insist, “Here, please enjoy some initiative, on the house.” It doesn’t help that our offline friends here in Indianapolis tend to lead busier lives than we do, and our internet friends don’t cross state lines too often and don’t consider Indiana a tempting vacation destination, despite all our sports and alcohol.

Once upon a time four months ago, two of our friends were preparing to move far away from here to another country — one with its own storied forms of sports and alcohol, often combined with disastrous results — and our li’l circle wanted to get together one last time before we never see them again in person and come to appreciate their future social media posts all the more. After extensive text negotiations our circle’s female half informed the male half our occasion would be something called “high tea”. I thought this was just one of their frequent Anglophile in-jokes, like when they used to bring up Harry Potter a lot. But no, “high tea” is a thing that Americans can do, even when it isn’t “tea time” on the grandfather clocks in any of the British Empire’s few remaining time zones.

So we agreed to try a new thing, even though Anne has hated tea ever since she was traumatized by a childhood prank. But we understand compromise is a thing friends do, even though compromises are against the 2025 Terminally Online Code of Conduct.

The teahouse of the June sun.

All parties agreed to still another compromise — meeting at a restaurant that none of us lived near. The Tea Room of Rustic Root is one of several small businesses in Beech Grove, out on Indy’s southeast side. Opened in August 2015 by two sisters, Rustic Root’s interiors are a collection of tables within their own separate enclosures, some held within quaint gazebos that create a cozy atmosphere for each party. There isn’t a dress code mandating bespoke finery or Victorian cosplay, but there aren’t rules against them, either.

They also sell accessories and paraphernalia for hosting your own tea parties at home or prettying up your knickknack shelves.

Our party of seven were seated at a longer, open-air table toward the back, presumably so as not to disturb anyone else’s Age of Innocence book-club debates. It was a pleasure for us uninitiated plebeians to attune to the genteel Downtown Abbey vibe.

Another table near ours offered fluffy throw pillows for ambiance or polite-society pillow fights.

Our more cultured companions graciously waited while Anne and I perused the menu up and down, then stared really hard at it, then tried up-and-down skimming again, then stalled for time till decisions could be made for us. Rather than separate orders, our party agreed to one of the “Lovely Afternoon Tea Time” party-style serving packages that we could share family-style with multiple teas, sandwiches and snacks. (Orders were permitted anytime, not just in the afternoon! Very magnanimous of them.) Among their choices and ours, I ultimately felt the tea flavors they chose were best, while my selection of a vanilla tea proved weakest. I drink more tea than Anne does, but not a lot of tea, and am learning gradually through my infrequent experiences that the best tea varieties are not necessarily the ones that also happen to be popular ice cream flavors.

As for the foodstuffs…I believe this was the “Grand Tea Time” extravaganza.

The portions looked dainty, but they served a plethora of them. We’re no stranger to the delights of macarons, teacakes, or tiny pastries. I believe this was our first exposure to “clotted cream”, which sounds more like first-aid ointment than a dessert filling, but we didn’t let the British/American language barrier interfere with our appetite for culinary adventure.

Speaking of which, the most revelatory part of the morning was, to her utter surprise, Anne actually liking one of the teas they chose. It was called “English Breakfast”, whatever that means. The options to add cream, sweeteners, and/or honey naturally helped, too. We both enjoyed its delicate flavors and found it an enjoyable substitute for American Breakfast tea, which we normally just call “coffee”. Rustic Root sells coffee, but it’s for the best that we didn’t order any because Anne hates it even more than tea.

Samples of their tiny sandwiches, which were identical to their much larger American counterparts.

No, we didn’t put on terrible fake accents while partaking in all this, which would’ve aggrieved the genuine Englishman in our party anyway. But “high tea” was the sort of head-clearing getaway everyone needs from time to time. It’s rare that we get to hang out with people our own age who aren’t relatives, outside of comic-con lines. Even then, those tend to be short-term connections that sever once everyone in line’s gotten what they came for. It was a delightful chance to chat up our intersecting interests once again without fretting about ordinary everyday aggravations — no politics, no headline news, no provocations driving us to fence to the death with teaspoons.

The memory of that summertime brunch stands out especially now as we approach the end of a year that’s had its share of ups and downs for us. Sure, Dragon Con was amazing once again and we have two more cons to go in 2025, but we’ve gone through a lot I haven’t bothered posting about, that no one wants to hear about — major appliance breakdowns, multiple car repairs, paying down preexisting debts from before all those happened, family demands and squabbles, the physical challenges and general angst of being middle-aged and all that entails, not to mention a multitude of pettier grievances that have given us — as the film Evan Almighty put it — “opportunities to be patient”. (Don’t get me started on the state of Indianapolis commuting. Just don’t.) Oh, and the entire country seemingly falling apart around us. At least, that’s how it looks through the mud-colored glasses that we call “smartphones”, which seem less and less “smart” with each new crisis every hour on the hour and the righteous indignation and/or hysterical overreactions they bring.

We cannot and will not contain, absorb, mourn, rage, take personal responsibility for and grievous offense at the staggering enormity of every calamity, catastrophe, controversy and tempest-in-a-teapot ever. There aren’t enough minutes in the day or nerves in the human brain for it. Call it a mental health issue or a psychological limitation. Escaping our phones for limited periods can help to a degree, but sometimes it’s tough to figure out what we should escape to instead.

So we treasure these connections whenever we can, with or without tea and tiny sandwiches. It’s invigorating — and all too rare — to hang out with other people who get us.

See what I mean?