Monday, January 26, 2009

Water works

So I have a friend who was thrown off a horse and among some cracked ribs and bumps and bruises, she knocked her head really bad. This said friend claims that since the incident she is much more emotional, as if something was knocked loose in her mind and now she is all of a sudden more easily touched. Incredibly random things now make her cry and she answers our incredulous looks of inquiry with a shrugged "I cry now." Not to cast aside her theory of the horse incident putting her tear ducts in high gear, but I think it is age. Growing up I can only remember seeing my father cry twice. Now he cries relatively often and I am told he even has shed a tear in movies like Disney's, "The Parent Trap." I don't identify myself as a crier but I am going to document the things that make me cry now and then check back in 3 years and see if that list has grown. To date what makes me cry is:

- "You Raised Me Up" put to just about any slide show or video. Alone the song could be described as unremarkable but put it to a graduation video, something portraying a triumph, or even a slide show of you favorite cats, I will bawl.
- Sunday morning Feed the Children Infomercials. Gets me every time.
- The end of The Little Mermaid, after Ariel gets married and says goodbye to King Triton.
- Watching any event in the Special Olympics
- The movies Armageddon, The Green Mile, Seven Pounds, Charlie, Evita and Antwone Fisher - I am yet to watch with out Niagra.
- The end of the book The Kite Runner
- History Channel programs on Martin Luther King Day
- Any Extreme Home Makeover show
- The thought of my neighbor's St. Bernard, Jake, dying. It hit me once when I was doing yard work in the front yard and he was hanging out with me and pushing me over.
- And finally....this video, introduced to me by one of my happy thoughts, Doug. I can make it about a third of the way through before the tears come. Don't ask me the reason, I have no idea why.

8 comments:

Joe said...

Good list. I love the part at about :55 in the video where the guy in the red shirt who is running into the camera shot falls on his back side. Brings a tear to my eye.

amelia said...

I love that video. It makes me cry, too.

Unknown said...

I have actually been to the place at 2:23

Tracy said...

I really like the list!! I'm not a crier either and I like your experiment.
So, regarding getting hit in the head...my beloved had a bad accident where he was hit by a car, he was on a bicycle, he was 20 and landed on his head and ended up in a coma for several hours. He noticed after the accident that something was different, couldn't quite put his finger on it and over the course of the next few years did a bunch of research. He found that severe head injuries can actually cause changes in the brain and how you cope, deal and interact with situations, events and people. For instance, he has to really focus sometimes to not just blurt out and be very, very direct with his words, which is not something he had to worry about before. He also has to watch his anger/frustration emotion, because that is when he is most likely to run into trouble...no, not the usual like the rest of us, but as an actual issue that did not exist before. So your friend crying more...it could be age, but maybe it's a combo of age and the hit to the head. Who could say...anyway...my 5 cents...LOL

Laki Girl said...

Never used to be cry-baby...but just his last week got all tear-welled watching the latest episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice. I was by myself and still felt embarrassed :)

amy said...

I agree with Joe about the guy who falls on his bum. But this is a SERIOUSLY awesome video! I think I have found a new purpose in life.

Grace said...

I would never cry at cats that is so dumb...

doug said...

1. I am glad I'm not the only one who is inexplicably moved to tears by that video. What IS it that that video is subconsciously communicating to us that is so cry-y?!

2. Of all those movies you listed, I've only seen Evita. Evita certainly makes me cry.

3. I was about to mock you for crying over "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," because I have only watched that show once, and I only watched it because the house they were building was LEED-certified, and since LEED was created by my employer I wanted to see it, and I was pretty bummed by the fact that they didn't mention LEED at all, and I thought it was hard-core cheesy and manipulative. And then I remember that, despite all that, I cried anyway. Kind of a lot.

4. Unlike you, I WOULD consider myself a crier. Music especially makes me cry. In fact, I was once compiling a list of "lyrics that make me cry," and the list included such diverse artists as the Streets, Dashboard Confessional, Les Mis, Tori Amos and three%hero. And maybe my teariness sounds girly and pathetic, but it is clearly genetic, and it definitely came from my dad, who cries at McDonald's commercials, and NOT my mom, who cries at so little that she has dubbed herself the Ice Queen.

5. What makes me cry most of all? Never seeing you anymore. :(