My wife and I are the same age and so each of us have friends bunched around that 36 year old band.
EXCEPT, she has a ton of friends and acquaintances (our age) who've lost a parent; a couple have even lost BOTH their parents already.
In fact, my poor wife lost her own father to pancreatic cancer when she was 15.
Meanwhile, in my circle of 36 year old friends and acquaintances....until early this year when a friend lost his father, I didn't know a single peer who had suffered this type of premature tragedy.
What could possibly explain this actuarial diversion?
Well, it does seem like New Yorkers marry and procreate later - so Mrs. C-Nut's friends' parents are a bit older.
But I think beyond that, and my wife agrees with me, that New Yorkers are a whole lot less *healthy* overall; they work more, smoke more, drink more, and eat more than the rest of the country. There's also more crime and more auto-related deaths. (My wife has THREE high school classmates that were killed on bicycles, by cars. And at least a couple of the *parent* deaths were also on the roadways.)
As my wife succinctly put it, "...because that's what Long Island does, it KILLS people!"
No comments:
Post a Comment