When I told my family in St. Louis that we were moving to France for a year, they were like, “Why? Fuck France. Ammi right?!”
We moved there anyway to test the waters about living there permanently once my youngest graduated high school, because, “Fuck America, ammi right??!!” France has free healthcare, healthier food, cheaper cost of living over all, and oh là là, the fashion! Everything’s better in France, and, naturally, all of our problems would just dissolve the moment we land. We chose Paris because I had to get my kid through his junior year of high school abroad and also, it seemed like a great hub for traveling in Europe as well as living our American-in-Paris dreams of becoming the most successful, late-middle-aged, soul/blues/pop duo to “make it” in gay Pareeee!
Our dreams were dashed in every way, but of course you already know that if you’ve read any of my previous posts. And if you haven’t read them, I’ve organized them neatly for your perusing pleasure HERE.
Now, when people ask, “What made you hate France?,” my answer is always, “The French.” But that’s just an irresistible one-liner. The truth is, had we moved anywhere else in France besides a big city, we would have probably been much happier with our choice to live there, and maybe even decided to actually do the damn thing permanently!
….is that we were sick of the city. Not just Paris, mind you, ALL FUCKING CITIES. Especially New York fucking City. After living there for the last twenty-five years, it was enough. Enough with the abuse-by-speaker, pounding out bass lines til 3 a.m. with lyrics that would make even George Carlin blush. Enough with firecrackers aimed AT your windows. Enough with the sky-high grocery prices and the invasion of the hipsters every weekend to eat and drink at the restaurants we couldn’t even afford in our own neighborhood. Enough of them taking up parking spots and littering the corners with their CitiBike discards and being forced to look at their perfectly coiffed mustaches as they formed lines down the block for DeFonte’s. Enough with finance bros smugly leading their lithe, model-type arm candy through the ‘hood thinking they were really doing something edgy by coming to Red Hook. Enough with those same finance bros scoping which row house they were going to scoop up with hedge fund money to continue the downward spiral of what once was cool, to what is surely becoming a gentrified, Disney-fied enclave of gross, nouveau riche dickheads. Also…enough with the Jew hate. Ammi right?!
We were done with the rudeness. Done with the pavement. Done with the traffic. Done with the 25mph speed limit soon-to-be 20mph.
We longed for nature. Clean air. The right to live free or die. No, we didn’t move to New Hampshire…we moved to Connecticut! And when I told my family in St. Louis we were moving to CT, they said, “Why? What’s in CT?”
The answer to that is: nothing.
And nothing can be beautiful. Rolling hills. Quintessential Americana at every bend. Clapboard colonials with painted fences to match. We have a chicken coop+run which was the size of our entire backyard in Brooklyn, where, having a backyard at all is a luxury. We even our own stream! A fucking stream! All for a quarter of the price of what it takes to live in NYC.
But alas, no place is perfect. Which brings me to the point of my post…
If you want to pass someone in the left lane, you will inevitably get stuck behind a presumed grandpa going 5 mph UNDER the speed limit. I mean, what kind of psychopath drives UNDER the speed limit in the fast lane??? The answer is…every CT’er. What do you normally do in this situation? Flash your lights, right? Guess what happens when you violently flash your lights at them? Nothing. They just sit in the fast lane, and when you FINALLY get the chance to illegally pass them on the right, they speed up. You read that right…they SPEED THE FUCK UP! It’s an impossible enigma that one must accept with defeat and go about life on I-84 and I-95. You’ve been warned. Yup. Also, there are only two real highways in CT. Thank God!
One thing we actually appreciated about Paris was the fact that you rarely smelled weed whilst flâner-ing about the rues. In NYC you can’t even walk to the corner store without getting high on someone sucking on a spliff at 9 a.m. while driving a pedi-cab filled with your Amazon packages that inevitably end up at someone else’s doorstep to eventually be stolen due to the fact that their messengers were high AF. If you are smelling skunk in CT, it is more than likely an actual skunk.
In CT, we have a well. It delivers our water. It’s artesian, not to be confused with “artisan.” Artisan, such as in bread, is hand-made. “Artesian” comes from the first mechanically accurate explanation for artesian wells that was given by Al-Biruni.[4] Artesian wells were named after Artois in France, where many artesian wells were drilled by Carthusian monks from 1126. (From Google) So, we have this artesian well which most “preppers” would kill for. It’s amazing. We never lose water pressure. We haven’t yet (knock on wood) gone dry. However, the last time I got my hair colored blonde, it turned orange. I looked like Lucille Ball, but trust me, it wasn’t funny. I called the salon to get a color correction and the first thing the colorist asked was, “do you have well water?”
Proudly, I responded, “Why yes, yes I do. Thank you for asking.”
Regretfully, she responded, “That’s why your hair is orange.”
Again??!!!! I thought we left my hair troubles in Paris, where they infuse the city water with magnesium and calcium which can make your hair dry, brittle and fall out!
Welp, here we are with well water that doesn’t jive with hair color. So, I am constantly spraying an expensive spray called “WOW” on my hair before every shower and praying to the artesian gods to make me beautiful again.
When we first landed at the Mobil to get gas here in Colonial CT, and made a “that’s what she said” joke at the counter, the clerk didn’t laugh, but in a way that indicated he didn’t get it. We cracked another at the Home Depot a week later while buying some “S” hooks and, same reaction. We thought we’d transferred from woke-NYC to woke-CT but then, we realized, people aren’t laughing because they are offended, they aren’t laughing because they truly don’t get the joke. They are earnest folx. Pure. Well, not everyone, today we found the one exception: Stella, at the Home Depot in Waterbury, laughed when my partner commented on size being the only thing that mattered with our carpet order and a “That’s what she said” finale, and she laughed. There is hope for us here in CT, but not a lot.
In the past, whenever I saw balls hanging from Ford F150s I would roll my eyes and cringe at the blatant display of pseudo masculinity. But my kids bought my partner, their stepdad, this shiny scrote for his birthday. We haven’t hung them yet, but methinks those, plus the “Proud American” placard in the rear window might just make us Republicans now. With the exception of voting for Republicans, Project 25, or against a woman’s right to choose. Ammi right?!
Ultimately, when you move to CT, your vehicle becomes the star of a Kid Rock video.
All because…France.
In Laughter,
LStL
Next Week’s Feature: LAUGHING MATTERS subscribers will get to watch/listen to my live chat with the self-proclaimed “King of Perimenopause,” comedian Matt Hyams! You’ll see/hear it here first in your inbox next Friday, 6/12/2026!
LAUGHING MATTERS is a place for personal essays about the things we’re all thinking but don’t always say out loud: aging, creativity, fear, love, disappointment, and the strange relief of finding humor in the middle of it all. Here, I try to tell the truth without making it heavy, and to find meaning without losing the laugh. If you’ve ever wanted to feel a little less alone inside your own thoughts, you’re in the right place. ❣️
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