In a recent thread, I admitted that a certain poem makes me get a little “misty,” and I’m not even sure why - I’m not sentimental like that, but boy, it really gets me right here everytime I hear it.
What does it for you? A certain song? A line from a movie? A passage from a book or line of poetry?
Poems do nothing for me, ever. They don’t appeal to me, which is strange because I am a big fan of literature.
Anyway, two things that spring to mind are scenes from films.
[spoiler]Apollo 13: The 4th minute of the ‘3 minute radio silence window’ where everyone is beginning to think the Apollo 13 crew hasn’t survived, then Lovell’s voice comes on (but I can’t remember what he says)
Lotr RotK: "I can’t carry if for you… But I can carry you![/spoiler]
Small children losing pets.
Makes me feel awful every time.
Oh, and when my little niece wanted to go to work with me on their last day of visiting. That tugged at my heartstrings.
Any time someone is crying I’ll start crying too if I don’t watch it. Even if it’s a baby crying. I can control myself but if I’m tired or all alone I will just start crying. One time I walked past a man in a phonebooth and he was crying and whining and saying “why would you *do * this to me?” to the person on the other end and as soon as I passed him gigantic silent waterworks came out of my eyes and when I got farther away I was really sobbing and I had to stop. It’s not so much that people get sad, it’s that people get sad enough to not care if anyone hears them cry. It just makes me feel down, and maybe somehow that makes me think we should all just cry, who cares about acting tough? I guess it’s like, if it’s going to be that type of party, I’ll stick my dick in the mashed potatoes too. If it’s okay for him to cry in public, I’m going to too! It’s not just that one person’s sadness it’s just all of our sadness coming out by someone crying in front of me.
Obviously this excludes people crying because of something I did.
Pokey, I know what you mean, and I just saw it in action at my office a couple of weeks ago. A friend got in trouble, and got called into the Manager’s office along with her supervisor (all three females). My friend thought she was going to be fired, but the manager said, “Nah, I called you in here only 'coz MY boss said to - I personally don’t care!” My friend was so relieved, she started crying. The manager, who’s a softy, started crying. The supervisor, also a softy, started crying. Aparently for, like, three minutes, they all cried sympathetic tears.
Glad I wasn’t in there - I would have been crying too! LOL
Something about many (most?) Sting song lyrics really resonates with me. He’s just got a way of painting imagery and getting to the marrow of the subject in a very vivid and precise manner.
Poem: Ozymandias by Percy Bishey Shelly
It just has an eternal quality about it.
Movie: The eulogy read by John Hannah (Matthew), specifically the W.H. Auden poem, “Funeral Blues (Stop all the clocks)”.
But above all else… the sounds of my children laughing, crying or just breathing while I watch them sleep.
The poem 110 Stories gets me every time. Aside from the subject matter, the use of language just amazes me. I’m pretty much incapable of reading it without misting up.
Also, anything involving the loss of a pet
When I hear my Mother or Father talk about how tired they are, I remember them back in the 60’s, towers of physical strength & optimism.
I just want to cry.
Anything about childbirth – stories, pictures, those birth story shows on TV.
Anything about babies – their little teensy hands, their little breaths, their little snuffly sleep noises.
Yes, those post-partum hormones have me in their grip.
Oh, nice one, QuickSilver - I just looked up “Stop all the clocks,” thought of my dead father, and now I’m misty at work… 
Winterhawk11 - “…The cracker-crumbs of fascia sieve the light…” I agree - great language.
And that’s two votes for pet-related triste…
one million kittens. No fleas. All litter trained.
[sub](In case anyone needs cheering up. Warning: The page is memory-hungry)[/sub]
When comic strips deal with real-life tragedy.
I suppose it’s the way that usually humorous artists turn their craft towards reacting to some something sorrowful. Searching webcomics for their 9/12/01strip brings back things like this which make me unreasonably sad.
“The Velveteen Rabbit”
Every time.
I have a recording of Andrew Weber’s Pie Jesu recorded about twenty or so years back that’ll make me mist over every time.
And movies, lots of ‘em, every thing from High Plains Drifter to Steel Magnolias. Now that I hate, me gettin’ misty over a chick flick but I’m absoluely defenseless.
What a great topic! For me, it’s almost anything animal related. But depending on the time of month, a dishwashing liquid commercial can do it.
I don’t normally consider myself very emotional, but sometimes it just seems that all my feelings are much closer to the surface.
StG
Those stick figure danger signs, like the vending machine falling on the person who shook it. I just find them to be very emotional for some reason.
And when I have PMS, everything.
Jerry Orbach. Everytime I see him, it makes me **really, really ** sad. I love that guy and miss him a lot. I just re-saw the L&O when his daughter was killed. Cried like a baby.
“She’s my baby, Ray. What am I gonna do?” Ugh.
I’m extremely embarassed that I just watched an episode of Magnum P.I. that had me practically in tears, because Magnum and TC both have horrible flashbacks and memories of Nam, right, and Magnum asks TC if he ever gets like that, and TC flashes back to his flashbacks and says “Nah, man”, and Magnum’s all “me either” and it was sooo sad.
I’m so glad I was all by myself watching that, I’d be humiliated to think anybody knew I was crying over something so corny. Tom Selleck’s chest hair did not have a Nam flashback, but maybe that’s what happened when the DVD faded to black - I thought it was where the commercial break went, but then again the hairy parasite wouldn’t have seen the jungle, now would it?