That one gets me every time, because I can relate to it. I have a 14-year-old dog named Deej who’s the finest dog a boy ever had, and when she rushes her old bones to greet me it’s the best thing in the world.
I’m another sentimental sap who cries at movies, even when I know what’s gonna happen. I think the movie I cried the most at was then end of “Schindler’s List” when they were placing stones on his grave 
Keith
I cry quite a bit (for a guy) too. On a recent trip to Europe, I teared up a couple of times: in Westminster Abbey, standing on the graves of great authors and in Amsterdam at the Van Gogh museum (just the beauty of the paintings got to me) - don’t know if those count - Also in Amsterdam, I bawled like a baby at Anne Frank’s house, which I didn’t expect going in… And, since everybody is admitting they cry at movies/commercials, I’ll add that I’ve been known to cry while watching an episode of “Oprah” (come on, we’ve all watched it…). Also, certain songs can get me misty.
I haven’t cried sober since I was 13 or so (25 years ago.)
If there’s enough alcohol in me (especially on a multi-day binge), I’ll sometimes tear up at a sad movie. Even then, though, I don’t bawl; I just get misty, with a lump in my throat. Maybe one or two tears will run down my cheek.
My wife is mystified at how I never cry, but no-one in my family cries. I’ve never seen my mother, father, sister, and any of my brothers cry as adults.
I definitely agree with you regarding the cues–something I read once said that crying is as natural as laughing and certainly different people laugh at different things.
I just read Ann Landers this weekend where a gentleman sent in his “Rules for Women”. Choking back some resentment, I read as part of it “Crying is blackmail.” Yes, as you say tears can be manipulative but I think it’s unfair to term crying in general as a ploy. Sometimes it’s the most appropriate way to deal with the emotional situation at hand, for a man or a woman.
Thanks to all for your input!
For more:
Guys, did that bring a tear to your eye?
:mad: :rolleyes:
It feels so good to find out that I’m not one of the few sentimental bastards out here. It would seem that either we are more numerous than I’d imagined or that a disproportionately large number of us are members of this message board. Anyhow…
I’m of the belief that keeping emotions internalized is a bad thing and that they should be allowed to come out and roam free. This hasn’t always been an easy thing for me to deal with. I come from good redneck stock and still live among the deer slaying, truck driving, tobacco chewing, RealTree wearing denizens of north Georgia (and those are just my relatives!), and let me tell you - they don’t take much to externalizing any emotion other than anger. Do you think that as a sensitive romantic living amongst such barbarians that I might be eligible for some government freebies? Nah, probably not.
The next time I’m leaving the theatre all red-eyed and teary I’ll hold my head high and be proud rather than hiding my head in my hands and pretending to be in the middle of a sneezing frenzy.
Name that disorder…
And, Omniscient, thanks for the link…
Hey me too. I’ve always wondered why that was. Let me tell you it make for some interesting situations.
I must admit I can get pretty weepy. Movies, music, commercials, etc. You name it, I’ve probably teared up over it. Book really kill me though. Woof. I had to stop readingA Boys Lifeby *Robert R. Mcammon(sp?)*for about a week (ditto for Where the Red Fern Grows. Hey, I think I’ll go read that now!) .It took me about two hours to read the last couple of pages. I would read a couple of paragraphs, tear up, put the book down, calm down, pick the book up and start all over again.
I was a wreck when my cat died two years ago. I hate to think what I’d be like at a funeral (I’m lucky enough to be able to say that I’ve never had occasion to attend one, a fact that I thank any and all available deities for, believe you me).
Knowing there are people in the world wishing to inflict harm on an entire group merely because they happen to be from that group makes me cry.
I’ve seen my husband of 3 years cry exactly twice. Once was when the newspaper where he’d been the editor for 15 years “downsized” his position suddenly and he was out of a job at 42 with no notice; and the other was a few months ago when we had to have Rudy, his 14-year old, smelly but very sweet cocker put to sleep.
My father NEVER used to cry, but he had a stroke a few years ago and, although his mind sems to be fully intact, he now cries at the drop of a hat. He also laughs a lot more, too, and his emotions in general seem to be more accessible. Go figure.
Oooh, goody. Catharsis. Sorry, I’ve got to resurrect this thread.
What sets me off? Movies in which guys cry. Women crying doesn’t usually get me upset at all (“yeah, yeah, Meryl’s crying, what else is new?”), but if I see some big, tough guy trying to hold back tears, it usually gets me.
A lot of people think I’m weird, but there are three scenes in Somewhere in Time that always make me cry. First, when Chris Reeves thinks Jane Seymour left after he was unable to meet her (having been knocked unconscious and tied up), she suddenly comes around a corner, sees him standing there in despair and calls for him, her voice breaking with emotion. “Richard!” Then, of course, the scene near the end when he finds the penny. And (although on an intellectual level I think it’s too Hollywood… aw, screw it, there’s no point looking at this movie on an intellectual level), the scene at the very end when he sees her and smiles and they embrace again. I’m a sucker for a totally impossible romance.
One of the biggest cries I’ve ever had was while watching Jerry Maguire. There’s that scene, after he’s become a big part of Renee Zellweger’s and her son’s lives, when she has had enough of him and tells him he can’t come by any more. He spends his last evening, sitting by the sleeping boy’s bed, just looking at that angelic little sweetheart. (Damn… hold on…)
I was just a wreck watching that scene. My wife told me to get it together before I scared the kids, so I had to bury my head in the back of the couch as I sobbed away.
Actually, anything sad involving children or animals will get me. Children 'cause I automatically identify them with my boys. Animals when their suffering is caused (directly or not) by humans, like say puppies being rescued from a pet store that caught on fire.
I cried when I found out that little Elian Gonzalez drifted in the ocean alone for two days (though there are doubts that’s true).
I cried when a man found out his ex-GF had his son and gave him up for adoption, then after winning the court battles, came and took his now-four-year-old son away from the only parents he had ever known (the photo of the little boy crying and reaching back for his – IMO – real parents haunts me to this day).
I cried when a woman came back home to find her house on fire; she had left her two young children alone after they had fallen asleep. The kids apparently woke up to find the house on fire, for when the firefighters found their bodies, they were huddled together on one of their beds, holding each other.
When my first son was born, after I cut his cord, carried him to the nursery, left him with the nurse, and had gone back to see how my wife was doing, I collapsed into a heap of sobs on her shoulder (total release).
When my second was born after a more difficult labour, I did the same thing only it was immediately after I first saw him.
It took everything I had to cry silently on the phone last November when my Dad told me the test results showed that his prostate cancer is too advanced and that he only has five years to live (he doesn’t want sad people around him).
This thread has made me tear up. Things like that dog commercial and hurt children. Come to think of it I cry quite frequently. Not an uncontrolled sobbing, but a few tears running down my face is not uncommon. Especailly in church, man that can get me going sometimes.
I’ll tell you what, the last time I cried was watching the HBO special on the 1980 US Hockey team winning the olympic gold medal. You know, “The Miracle on Ice”. I don’t know if any tears actually ran down my face, but I did well up, and I had to dab my eyes. Movies can sometimes get me also. I cried like a little girl when I saw Mr. Holland’s Opus. Ordinarily, I don’t full out weep like that, I just get a little choked up and my eyes start to well up a little.
A few movies. Not many lately.
A few books. These really left me devastated, cleaned out, revealed to myself somehow…
Songmaster and Hart’s Hope by Orson Scott Card
A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin
The real life stuff, like friends dying, and friends lost. Lovers leaving, leaving lovers… I don’t know, but the way you cry then seems different. Necessary. Kind of like bleeding. No poetry, just necessity.
But what came to mind when I was reading this thread, was a night when I was nineteen or so, and was just finishing up a summer as a camp counselor. Most of the camp was gathered around a big campfire, and the goofy songs had all been gone through. It had been a great summer, and I’d really grown to care for some of the kids, and everyone was thinking about going home the next day, getting back to their real lives, and leaving the camp behind. The girl playing guitar began a beautiful, mournful song in Yiddish that I’d never heard until I’d worked there, and have never heard since. All the kids joined in, quietly, and I teared up a bit. And then we got to Puff the Magic Dragon.
I had a very quiet, very discete, complete emotional meltdown.
I’m a sentimental ol’ lug. I never cry from anger. Mostly it’s thoughts of noble sacrifice, loss or great suffering that get me. Struggling for and finding redemption do, too.
Show me the Vietnam wall, I get misty. Seeing veterans at the wall, grieving alone or with comrades, I blubber. Show me shots of Teddybears and photos left at the base of the wall by surviving family… I’m wrecked for the day.
When Dumbo finds his momma and she sings to him as she cradles him in her trunk, jeez, the faucets start flowing.
Ditto for the end of “Field of Dreams.”
“The Horse Whisperer,” when the girl admits she’s afraid nobody will ever want her because of her amputation. Double-faucets when she and her horse (pain in kids and animals touches every nerve of mine) finally bond again.
I wept through the last forty, fifty pages of Orson Scott Card’s “Speaker for the Dead.”
Great joy can do it, too. Seeing some Olympic medals ceremonies get me weepy. It hardly matters what nationality wins it.
I wept when my team won the Super Bowl. It’s been a long time; I’m a Raider fan. (I also got a bit teary when they finally returned to Oakland from L.A.)
I wept for a minute or two as I descended from the summit of Mount Shasta (northern CA) for the first time. The sun was setting, the snow conditions and weather were all perfect, I was with good friends, I was in excellent shape (21 years old). Maybe it was due to oxygen deficiency, maybe endorphins from the effort, but it felt like a religious epiphany, one of those moments of clarity and (like wow, man) connection that come only a few times in a lifetime. And I wept a bit because the moment was passing from my grasp even as I was enjoying it. That’s one of the problems with those “it doesn’t get any better than this” moments.
I’ll have to post about my husband since (a) I’m not a man and (b) he’s not a doper to do this on his own behalf.
He’s never been terribly buttoned up, but also not a prolific crier. Since our son was born, he has had more occasions to cry. After the nipper was born and in the NICU and I was off having more unexpected surgery, he said he bawled like a baby. Relief, exhaustion, pride, worry, joy, fear, loneliness all wrapped up into one.
He has teared up just talking about Cranky Jr. learning to walk (before he accomplished this) and while watching him sleep. Also watching me pack up his tiny little outgrown outfits. sniffle
And to think our bastard of a neighbor told him, before Cranky Jr arrived, that having kids was a drag because “you don’t get much back, given what you have to put in.” Idiot.
I’m a big baby. I never cry from injuries unless they are most severe, but I often tear up when having deep conversations with friends and such. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s rather annoying not being able to see clearly.
Movies make me tear up all the time… There are one or two that I can’t even think about without it happening. Don’t cry much in real life. Last time I was almost sobbing was when I was abou 17 and my mom wouldn’t believe that an illicit overnighter with a female friend was chaste.