One of the most overused expressions of all time is 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks', but speaking as an elder schnauzer myself I can't deny that there is a kibble of truth contained somewhere in there. Still, I have been known to occasionally learn a new thing or two if given a chance.
A good example might be my growing appreciation of music. I've always loved music - especially as a listener, because my playing skills were minimal - but my enjoyment of it was more limited all those years than I realized. It wasn't until I found myself in an early semi-retirement a few years ago and began to spend more time with music, that I discovered that I was woefully uninformed.
For one thing, I found that there were countless songs that I'd heard so many times that they were as familiar to me as a friend's voice, but because my normal way of listening to music was as background for reading or driving, I often had no idea of 
the name of the piece or the artist. And even if I knew the musician and the names of some of his best-known tunes, I couldn't always match them up. For example, I was a big Jimmy Dorsey fan but even though I knew I was listening to Jimmy, was that "Contrasts" or "Sophisticated Swing" I just heard?
I'm happy to report that I've made some progress in my understanding of that kind of music, but meanwhile I discovered another problem. I realized that I also had a lot of gaps in my knowledge of popular music, especially what came along after I was well into adulthood. At that time in my life I wasn't really interested in pop music, was pretty sure that I didn't get it, and I seldom listened to it. You could have put what I knew about it in a thimble and still have room for your finger.
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