soap opera funerals.
especially of note:
Drew in Neighbours
Steff in All Saints (watched that today)
Maxine in Corrie
Jamie in Eastenders.
truly mawkish
Anything that makes me think of time passing - the song “Sunrise, Sunset” always makes me tear up.
I hate hate hate watching a big cat pacing in a concrete cage at the zoo.
My local zoo is in the process of upgrading its facilities, a section at a time, but they’ve still got two old 1950s-era wire-and-concrete cages populated with, respectively, a cougar and a jaguar.
It makes me incredibly sad to see a magnificent creature like this moving repetitively around a cold, unnatural, and tiny (compared to its vast unconfined habitat) box. I love watching animals just do what they do, but I can’t look at these exhibits for more than a minute or so without risking breaking down into tears.
Thankfully, the zoo will be moving the jaguar into a much larger and much more comfortable habitat this summer. If it’s half as cool as what they did for the African wild dogs, I’ll be happy indeed.
Stuff like this breaks my heart, too. Something that’s been made with love and given in good faith, being not-appreciated, and laughed at… gah. 
There’s also (here in Britain) an advert for mobile phones in which there’s a little animated phone wandering around miserably on a table in a cafe while a group of teenagers laugh at it and try to push it off the table, because it wasn’t bought at Carphone Warehouse, and therefore isn’t cool, or something. It distresses me terribly. Every single time.
I just want to say that this is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read on the SDMB.
And yes, whenever I:
-hear the songs “Right hear waiting for you” or “you’ve got a friend”
-see one of those little sponge-with-a-plastic-handle dishwashing thingies
or
-pull my nice warm handmade blanket up over me in bed
I feel more than a touch sentimental.
It doesn’t make me sad, exactly, but the Pet Shop Boys’ song “Home And Dry,” a wistful song about two lovers across the ocean from one another, makes me quiver up a little.
oh tonight, I wish you would be here with me but I won’t see you till you’ve made it back again home and dry…
For some reason, 12/30/02’s Garfield was horribly sad to me. Just the expression on his face left me depressed for a week or two. No idea why, since Garfield, of all things, rarely has any emotional affect on me.
At one of my former jobs, I would have to drive past this horse stable on the way to work. A couple of times I would see one lone horse standing in the field, while the rest of the horses were either far away from him or on the other side of the fence. And I don’t even like horses that much.
Animals having to do really stupid things at the circus. Or those animals at the petting zoo that can’t get away from the crowds of children.
When you’re feeding bread to the ducks in the pond at the park, and all the ducks get a piece, except that one slow duck that’s being bullied by the others.
This gets me sad, too. I don’t know why I always wander to the toy section of thrift shops.
This bear made me sad. I found it at a thrift store not too long ago, and just had to rescue it. It’s one of the oddest looking bears I’ve seen, and it makes me sad to think that somebody made it for someone else and that somebody didn’t want it. But, generally, I want to save all the stuffed animals at thrift stores.
Speaking of the Zoloft egg, there’s a simular commercial that might be a locally run one. It’s about getting depressed as old age sets in and it shows this older woman sitting in a rocking chair, looking, well, extremely depressed. She stares off into space sadly, or stares at her hands.
Music boxes nearly always make me cry.
Many things associated with children move me to tears. Hearing small children at play with their parents especially affects me.
Water–a creek or river–running downhill over rocks saddens me immensely.
The realization that my father is sliding into Alzheimers and that I am powerless to halt that slide breaks my heart.
I get sad when I walk into a huge bookstore with several floors of old dusty books that are on floor to ceiling bookshelves. I think it is because I know I would never be able to read all of those books. In a way, it reminds me of my own mortality.
The song “Always On My Mind” by Willie Nelson always makes me sad. My father and I used to have a great relationship when I was a little girl. We hardly see each other at all anymore because his wife hates me. When I hear that song I feel as if it could have been written by him to me as I know it must pain him that we have become so estranged.
"Maybe I didn’t treat you
Quite as good as I should have
Maybe I didn’t love you
Quite as often as I could have
Little things I should have said and done
I just never took the time
You were always on my mind
You were always on my mind"
Makes me sad reading the lyrics but even more sad hearing it sung by Willie as my father and I listened to Willie Nelson when I was a little girl.
Remember the pastry chef of Sesame Street? The one who would appear at the top of a huge flight of stairs, holding a huge platter with some confectionary masterpiece? And then he’d fall down the stairs and wind up at the bottom, plastered with frosting.
I know it was supposed to be slapstick, but I always felt so bad for him. Still do. All that hard work and beautiful pastry, wasted . . .
Also the inscribed books that were given away, and shelter critters. My only consolation there is that any dog we do take in has a home for the rest of its life, and we’ve taken in some pretty pathetic cases that were on their way there.
Persian violets-- they were a popular ‘new’ houseplant around the time my dad was diagnosed wth pancreatic cancer and we always had one or two around. I can’t see them without remembering his dying.
Hotel rooms are horribly depressing-- filthy, uncomfortable, and they’re not home and far away from those I love most. The only thing worse is hotel rooms at sunset when even the sun is abandoning you in a strange city.
Whenever I hear rarely-played songs from the early 70s, it takes me back to when I was a little girl, and I get homesick for that time in my life. Very common songs don’t do that, just obscure ones; I’m not really sure why.
Whenever I visit a bookstore I am reminded of the one thing that my father and I shared. Reading. I think back to the times we shopped and discussed books…and I am reminded that those days are past and will never happen again. Sad? You betcha…
The increasing lack of personal relationships in everyday life. Many people do not even know there neighbors. We continue to insulate ourselves in suburbs, cars and rush around without seeing what is around us.
Now with big box stores like Wal-Mart and Home Depot, Supercuts etc. taking over, you generally do not get to know the employees. They usually have high turnover and the money goes to people who do not live in the community. Gone are the days of going to Floyds Barbershop and saying the usual. There is no longer a sense of community. While some aspects of life have definitely improved from the way they were in the past, much of it as gotten worse at the same time.
**Stuffed animals. **
I, too, hate to see stuffed animals in the discard pile or Free pile at garage sales.
Stuffed animals at toy stores are harder for me to pass than chocolate. I blame the *Land of Misfit Toys * for this complex. Strangely enough, I don’t have alot of stuffed animals around the house for the kids because I restrain myself well.
**Snapshots of Time **
Old time photographs at garage sales and antique stores. I just feel so damned bad that these were someone’s pictures and now that they are gone, they have really no where to go. I want to buy them all and create my own crazy family tree.
[hijack]
There are two old time photos that I’ve passed up that have haunted me:
One was a couple of men staging a hanging. It was probably mid 1890’s, judging by their suits, and they staged for the camera a hanging, a shooting and then in the last picture, they were all having a nice picnic with friends. It was the first daurraugo-type (sp?) that I’ve ever seen a sense of humor with the subject matter. What a fun afternoon that must have been!
The other was a huge photographic portrait of an old lady that made Granny Clampett look like Claudia Schiffer. Just an angry, withered up, gray hair in a bun, wired rimmed glasses of a mean looking lady *glaring * at you like you just wiped your dirty hands on a shirty drying on the line. I regret not getting the portrait/picture to this day.
[/hj]
**Dogs and Cats **
Whenever I read in the Adopt A Pet section of the paper of a pet ( dog or cat) that is up for adoption because it’s owner has died, I just tear up. How sad for the animal to lose it’s loved one and then their house. I want to take them all in.
Yeah, that was pretty much the way we felt, too, but in the end, anger couldn’t hold up against sadness.
Worst part was, for a variety of reasons, my buddy and I drifted into different circles after that summer, and although there was never any bad blood between us, we just stopped being “best friends” after that.
So really, the best time I had with a good buddy was that summer, which ended on such a down note.
I love Chuck Jones’ HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS, It’s my favorite holiday special. I’m male, and not an especially emotional person, but at the very end, when Boris Karloff reads:
Ahem! I didn’t mean to post yet. Let me continue–
At the very end, when Boris Karloff reads:
Welcome, Christmas; bring your light.
Welcome in the cold, dark night.
Christmas Day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to clasp.
Welcome, Christmas, while we stand
Heart to heart and hand in hand . . .
And the camera climbs up into the sky, and the screen is filled with snowflakes–
I bawl EVERY TIME.
Excuse me. I have to go blow my nose now.