The Cry List

We always made fun of my mom for crying at movies, TV shows and commercials, especially when we were kids.

She would try to discreetly wipe away her watery shame but she'd have to sort of push up under her glasses (in the eighties her giant blue and pink tinted octagonal shaped glasses) to get a good swipe, so that was sort of always a big giveaway, quickly followed by a "Moooomm... are you CRYING?! Geez!" and the funniest thing, is we'd be watching, like, uh... Roseanne or something like that.

Now I do the same thing.

I don't have giant amazing eighties glasses (dang!) so I can be a little more stealthy about it. But I'm not always successful at keeping it secret.

But here's the deal. I cry at almost everything that is what I consider "a perfect moment."

Now, I'm talking pretty much just entertainment/art/TV/movies/music here. I'm not talking about weeping over taking my kids to their first day of daycare or Donny leaving for New York or when our dad had a heart attack. We (especially me) just don't get very crying prone about stuff like that. In real life I mostly just cry when I'm mad.

But in non-real-life these are things I have cried over in the past, oh, let's say 60 days:

1. Toy Story 3 (like every time my kids watch it, so let's say ten times in the last two months): when the ominous, abused and eerily silent Big Baby (our hands-down favorite character) remembers the little girl Daisy he used to belong to before he became ruined by the world, and has a big plastic baby revelation (my kids always get all excited right before the Big Baby "ma-ma" part and start looking back and forth between the TV and me because they think it's cool when I cry during their shows, Charlie always gets this big goofy grin on his face, but then he sort of tears up, too because he "gets it," which I know will soon pass as he gets older and will just transition into ridiculing me for it.)

2. Bill Cunningham's New York: went to see this documentary about this Mr. Rogers looking eighty-year old man who's life work has been riding his bike around NYC photographing real women in their street fashions but he also happens to be the most influential fashion photographer from the 1950's til now. He is so sweet, humble, goofy and singular in his life's mission that you can't not watch this and feel something. It's a crowd pleaser. But of course, I'm the dork that has to run to the bathroom after to have an "ugly cry." I can tell if I am repressing an ugly cry if I have a discreet single tear that is fat enough to roll all the way down my neck into my bra. That means if I was in private (like watching the musical episode of Buffy in my room) that I would be having a flat-out bawl.

3. Seeing Oklahoma spoken word poet, Lauren Zuniga go on about rows of revelation-promising energy drinks and "little boxes on the hillsides" at a recent poetry, er, jam? Slam? Thingy? Whatever, I was the dork getting all weepy.

4. The opening credits to Game Of Thrones. Every time. The HBO show is just so-so, but the books by George R.R. Martin are so, so good. And the opening animation is like this mechanical moving-gears, little miniatures, music-box-like map of this "world" and it's just so well done and such a neat homage to this amazing epic world that Martin has created. Note: it is not sad. Do I tear up anyway? Affirmative. Other opening credits that make me misty-eyed include: thirtysomething, Cheers, True Blood, The Wire, Sopranos, United States of Tara, original Weeds opening, The Office, and WKRP in Cincinnati... "baby you and me were never meant to be, but maybe think of me once in a while..."

5. See, I don't just cry at sad stuff. I also cry at cool/lame stuff, a quick list from recent weeks would include:
- three to four times during American Idol finale

- am anticipating crying during a Mia Michaels choreographed number during this summer's season of So You Think You Can Dance
- finally saw Crazy Heart, only cried during end song which was best part
- um... cried in Tron... Tron! What the heck!? I like it. Whatever. Maybe it's a Jeff Bridges thing.
- downloading the main theme music from The Social Network soundtrack
- season finale of The Office... ack! Of course I cried. I cry right now just thinking about Michael Scott getting to be a husband and a dad and finally be happy.

Kathleen told me she's been watching a lot of My So Called Life lately. Now, Claire Danes as Angela Chase? I've always said she is the ultimate ugly-crier. You cannot watch her meltdown in the school bathroom or in her teenage bedroom as her forehead crumbles and her chin gets all trembly and bumpy while her nose runs and her lips get kind of all spitty... and not want to cry with her.

Kathleen also said My So Called Life reminds her so much of me at that age.

Huh, can't imagine why.