So yesterday I went to see this very funny new play, “God of Carnage,” with my friend Liz. It’s a comedy of ill manners with some sharp observations about marriage. Also, it makes fun of Brooklyn, which is always a good thing. Brooklyn takes itself pretty seriously.

Then, within seconds of the curtain rising, old people started unwrapping their hard candies.

Left, right, front, back—the crinkle of plastic wrap, laboriously undone, filled the air like butterflies with jagged wings. One old woman three seats to my right actually had a bag of the damn things, which she proceeded to work her way through without a pause. Crinkle crinkle crinkle.

Crinkle crinkle crinkle.

All I want to do is sit back and watch Hope Davis for a while, lose myself in her mellifluous voice, without being hammered by a wall of hard-candy sound. Is that too much to ask?

Is it?

So what is it with old people and hard candy? Is the lure of the hard candy so great that it can not be resisted? Is there something about getting old that really makes you long for hard candy? Can old people not hear the avalanche of crinkling that they are causing? Or do they simply feel that opening their hard candy during a play is one of the prerogatives of being an old person?

Surely this is one of life’s mysteries.

Hope Davis: No fan of hard candy, I’m willing to bet.