Waking Up, Old, In Connecticut
I was 21 years old when I moved to Connecticut, only to discover that the counties weren’t really counties and liquor stores weren’t called liquor stores and garage sales weren’t called garage sales and you couldn’t buy beer or bottles of liquor after 8 p.m. and you couldn’t buy wine in grocery stores and that cities weren’t allowed to set their own bar hours and that taxis didn’t cruise city streets and that Sunday “Blue Laws” meant that you couldn’t buy certain things at certain places on Sundays, although you could buy the same stuff at other places, except for when you couldn’t, especially on a Sunday. Usually.
It was all so traumatic and draining that I took a nap. And when I woke up, I was about 75 years old.
At the time, I thought that was very strange, but I have come to find out that getting prematurely old in Connecticut — and that taking a little nap — are the norm.
The new Census Bureau numbers tell the Connecticut story: we’re the third-oldest population in the country, in a median age, white, non-Hispanic sort of way. At a median age of 43.2, we could almost rename the state “AARP.”
Part of the problem is our “manufacturing crisis” — and I don’t mean Pratt & Whitney moving south, like almost everyone else in Connecticut, apparently. No, our state doesn’t manufacture many babies. We’ve been among the lowest on the fertility scale for decades, due in part to Cohen the Columnist’s reluctance to respond to all the flirty letters and marriage proposals he gets from women readers.
Beyond that, of course, when the young workers discover that their only mission in life is to work really hard and then give all their money to state employees, so that they can retire early and move out-of-state, the Connecticut kids move away first, to states with low taxes, less intrusive government, and environmental laws not designed to drive up the cost of housing to levels unaffordable to anyone but newspaper publishers.
Connecticut retains one of the wealthiest populations in the nation, even though they tend to drool all over their expensive silk ties, since they are, well, you know, so old. But that helps explain the nap thing.
A Pew Research Center survey has found that 40 percent of people over the age of 65 take naps every day — and go shopping every day. Connecticut must still be a retail juggernaut, with tens of thousands of wealthy, ancient souls napping, rousing themselves — and then, shopping.
That’s what happened to me after my first nap in Connecticut. I awoke, much older than when I dozed off, and I went to the grocery store to buy some beer. But it was 8:03 p.m. and a large plastic sheet had been placed over the beer selection. I aged another 10 years, right on the spot.
The New York Observer, a weekly, semi-snobby arts and culture and public affairs weekly in New York City, published for rich people, had dueling real estate ads in the paper a few weeks ago that really told the story.
One ad featured an 8,600-square-foot colonial on 17 acres, with a gym and a theater and other accoutrements, for $1.5 million. It was in New Hampshire. The big, red headline promoting the property: “No Sales or Income Tax.” Yup. We know.
And then, there was a smaller ad, from what was presumably a home builder/developer type outfit, suggesting that we “come home to Connecticut.” Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I think I’ll take a nap.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
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