I was eleven. I’d been hit by a car on the way home from school. Nothing serious, but it was a bit of a shock and I’ll freely admit, lying there on the street scraped a bruised, my pre-teen self made a bit of a scene. Some of you may find that understandable, which is how I know we’re not related. It was explained at length that such behavior is unacceptable from males in the Brown family, regardless of the circumstances. The Spartans were whiners and don’t get us started on that namby-pamby Marcus Aurelius - that guy was practically Richard Simmons by our standards.
In the 40-odd intervening years, I haven’t shed a tear - relationships have ended, friends and relatives have died - some after prolonged suffering. I watched a friend’s puppy get run over by a Camaro. I’ve been stabbed twice. I’ve accumulated the usual bumps and bruises of an active life, and the attendant scars with nary a whimper.
The closest I’ve come is a lump in my throat and really, there’s only ever been one cause: the ending of “Raising Arizona” when Hi and Ed return the baby. No idea why, but I always find that moving. Well, I know why, but not why just that and not Oklahoma City or the towers falling or Katrina or when Natasha pushes Bruce off the cliff because they need the Hulk.
But there’s a new measure now, because yesterday I got my picture taken by the Kentucky DMV. Holy crap. It’s eye-wateringly bad. It’s throw up in your mouth a little bad. It’s LA County mug shot bad - remember Nick Nolte’s shot? Nick is one handsome son of a bitch compared to this thing. Showing this picture is an act so hostile that there’ll be an addendum to the Geneva Conventions declaring it a valid cause for instigating global conflict.
Eleven year-old me would be bawling his eyes out. Or wishing that car had been going faster.
Oh, I cry all the time, watching movies, listening to country music, sometimes even seeing commercials on TV. But rarely, if ever, for real world events or things that happen to me.
I sobbed my way to work last week listening to Fiddler on the Roof when it came on the Broadway channel. Long story, but that musical is firmly intertwined with my father’s death, and it always makes me cry.
I tear up and cry all the time. Cute kitten video? Sobs.
I cry all the time, too. I think it’s very healthy. Choking back tears and being proud of “never crying” is a pov I’ve never understood.
This world is a mean, rough place. There’s a lot to cry about.
And when something inspiring and wonderful happens (like the towns in Newfoundland that took in the diverted 9/11 plane people), well, that’s cause for tears, too.
I got divorced from someone I didn’t want to get divorced from about fifteen years ago. My brother-in-law/band-mate/sometimes-boss was paralyzed from the waist down about three years ago. I was relatively cry-free in between, but those hurt.
Lately though, for a good cry - in a happy sense of that term - I frequently turn to YouTube videos of people hearing for the first time. Those always get me.
The last time I cried was a few weeks ago when I lost my boy. I describe it in detail in another thread here, but for here I’ll just summarize it by saying it was exactly like being forced to watch the person you love most in the world being tortured and all you can do is hold his hand and tell him to hang on. I’m mostly over the tears but I still want to punch the universe in the throat a few times.
Oh gods. I am an involuntary crier. I cannot control it - and the annoying part is that it happens when I’m angry, or frustrated, or feel like I’m being treated unfairly, or feel like I really fucked up, and so some people think it’s crying-to-manipulate when it’s as involuntary as flinching.
I remember one time when I got really caught off guard by my crying a few years ago. I had a relative who I had a good friendship with but I was always secretly jealous of, when we were both younger my parents got divorced, I had a difficult time financially. His parents were loving and supportive, his immediate family was a lot better off financially than mine, he wanted for nothing. Sometimes I felt like I wished he would get knocked down a peg or two, he was living such a carefree life and I was not. Then one day at work I got a call from his mother, and she told me he was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, they put his chances of making it at 30%. I was suddenly so disgusted with myself and sad for him that I burst into tears in the middle of work and had to go hide in the bathroom till I regained composure.
He went through two years of hell with drug cocktails and eventually a bone marrow transplant but he eventually was cured, but he still has residual health issues he deals with from all the treatments. I was still very young and immature at that point but I was left with the indelible impression of how you can ostensibly have it all, have the world as your oyster and then have it all taken away from you in the blink of an eye and how really pathetic and petty my jealousy of him was in the scheme of things.
I saw somewhere (probably on the Dope) the thought that if we laugh easily, why wouldn’t we cry easily? I’m a sympathetic crier too, so I am choked up pretty regularly.
Oh Hell no, as Emerson Cod might say. The pic will remain unseen by anyone. The next time I’m stopped by the police for anything, my plan is to just claim I’m driving without a license and pay the fine. Or let them shoot me. Either is preferable.
I don’t remember ever crying in my life, I mush have when I was very young but I have no recollection of it. I quit drinking when I was 40 years old. Every time I got in the car and turned on the radio tears would start running down my face. Not bawling and sobbing but really tearing up. This lasted for a few months. Then I went back to normal. I didn’t cry when I lost my mother and father even though I felt like it but I did cry when my young nephew committed suicide.
I cry all the time, but less about myself, more about other people or things I experience (books, tv, movies, etc.). If I don’t cry at least once in a movie, it’s a bad movie. And lately, I sometimes cry about one of my kittehs; just like me, he’s old and not doing very well.
Agree. I actually do problem solving while I cry, if the issue I’m crying about is things going wrong in my life. By the time I’m done weeping, I have a plan I can execute. But then I’m able to compartmentalize things in my head that way. My rational brain continues to function while my emotional brain makes me look like I’m a wreck. I know not everybody can do that. It might be my superpower.
My girlfriend played the Hamilton album twice on a road trip this summer. This one has me in tears. I mostly choked them back, but that’s because I was driving and crying your eyes out are not exactly compatible with safe operation of a vehicle.
I was cycling through the 9-11 stuff; watched 9/11 The Falling Man documentary on my tablet.
I remembered that my grandmother (I only had one; my father’s side had vanished into the Great Depression) … had committed suicide by jumping out of a 20-story highrise window in Chicago. Her body wasn’t found for three days.
And then I remembered that my sister’s husband had hung himself in an Atlanta hotel bathroom.
I tear up watching movies sometimes. A full blown cry was last year when we decided it was time to put our dog down. She was my first dog, and my wife’s second - the cry really surprised me.