BY JULIE SEYLER

Is it accurate to state that we on the right side of 50 can automatically conjure up that scene from “The Sound of Music” when the seven Von Trapp children are jumping off their beds while Julie Andrews, aka Maria, is trilling “Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens?”

I am not saying the vision conjures up the same feelings – there are those who embrace that movie, and those who disdain it. But what I am saying is that it is a cultural set-point of the mid-60s. Because of that scene, and that song (and nobody but nobody does a better interpretation of “My Favorite Things” than John Coltrane), I love to think about, and make lists of my favorite things – many of which have changed; others of which have stayed the same.

So something like sitting on the beach before the crowds arrive, watching the sea slurp in and out, and the gulls swoop up and down, is a no-brainer favorite thing since way before I started coasting past the half-century mark. However, a super-chilled gin martini with a single olive on a Saturday evening is a new favorite thing – the gin factor making it “new.”

But the best-of-all favorite thing evolved soon after I became a pasta addict in 1986 following a trip to Italy. The favorite part is not simply eating spaghetti, it’s eating spaghetti at 6 a.m. on a rainy Sunday morning with a glass of fermented grape juice.