Why Do I Cry?

I never cry at a movie the first time I see it. After that, all bets are off.

BIG, one of Tom Hank's earliest movies is the story of a 13 year old boy, Josh, who wishes he could be big and thanks to a fortune telling machine that he encounters at a carnival, his wish is granted. As time goes by he starts to long for his family and, with it, his lost childhood. There is a scene towards the end where Josh goes back to his old neighborhood where he witnesses several things that remind him of his life as a kid. There are a couple of kids hitting and catching a baseball. The ball escapes the fielder and rolls to where Josh is standing. He picks it up and throws it back. One of the kids yells, "Thanks, mister". My daughter learned a long time ago that if she ever wanted to see her father cry all she had to do was to catch me watching BIG and wait for that scene. I figured out that I always cry at that moment because I am so jealous that he can go back to being a kid and I can't. It's strange because I don't cry when I try to enter my birth date to register for something online and I have to scroll down 3 times just to find the range of years in which my birth year (1945) appears.That should really get to me, but it doesn't. That part of the movie,however, always breaks me up.
I remember seeing Sleepless in Seattle in Dallas with a girl (Girl? All right, a topless dancer from the Men's Club of Dallas) I was seeing (seeing?). Bonnie and I went to see the movie the next week in New York. I clearly remember now, 15 years later, sitting in the theater, with the tears starting to well up at the opening scene at the cemetery where Tom Hanks wife is buried. I had to turn away to make sure I didn't have to explain getting teary eyed at a movie I had "never seen". Of course, I always cry when they meet at the top of the Empire State Building at the end of the movie. There is something about happy, improbable endings that gets to me.
The only time I came close to crying the first time I saw a movie was when I saw The Titanic. Hold it, stop right there. Anyone who believes that should stop reading immediately and go look for something else to read. This is not for you, asshole. Actually though, there was one movie which made me cry the first time I saw it, but not until I was about 15 minutes outside of the theater. That was Field Of Dreams. I think I related to Ray's (Kevin Costner) relationship with his father. He and his father never got along and at the end of the movie he gets a chance to make it right. I never did.
Lately the crying has gotten out of hand. Second Hand Lion and are Notting Hill, are both charming comedies. I need a Kleenex to watch either of them. One has the hero getting what he wants at the end (sob, sob) the other has both heroes die while flying a biplane upside down through a barn (sob, sob). OK, I can't explain that other than to say they are moving for me. The other day,however, I was watching the funniest movie of all time, Soap Dish. I have seen this movie more than 50 times. When my daughter needs cheering up, or she wants to make me laugh one of us will quote a line from this movie and it always has the desired effect. Don't ask me how, I could never explain it, but the last time I watched it, about two weeks ago, sure enough I found myself tearing up. This is starting to get out of control and it got me trying to figure out the real reason that I cry. I was thinking that maybe this is one of the signs of a depressed personality. Only I am not unhappy, and certainly not depressed. I can't figure it out. All you non readers out there, how about writing in and letting me know what you think. Now actually, that's depressing. No one reads this blog. Or maybe there are thousands out there reading this and they just don't know how to add comments. Yeah, that's it.


P.S. If the dominant instrument in a song that you are listening to is the trumpet, and you are not listening to jazz, the music you are listening to probably sucks.