“I was all right for a while… I could smile for a while”
Writing by treason on Friday, 25 of May , 2007 at 2:47 pm
Um… I gotta ask: What’s with all this crying? Just when I thought that John Boehner was starting to grow on me a little (I was getting this odd Humphrey Bogart vibe off him and I admit I kinda liked it), he snots up on the Senate floor. And it isn’t the first time this has happened. But it’s not just Boehner – Robert Byrd was bawling the other day, which prompted Laura Ingraham to ask: When exactly is it appropriate for a man to cry?
Callers immediately responded. “Laura! How ‘bout that last scene in Field of Dreams?”
You know, “Wanna have a catch?” I remember how much I needed to see this movie when it came out because I’d read the Kinsella book and was curious how it would translate to film. But I was outnumbered on a double date and had to sit through a different, crappier film. Annoyed, I pushed my mother and sister into the car the next day and told them that we were going to go see a movie.
It’s still so clear, like it was only yesterday. The film ended, we walked up the carpet out of the darkness, and the first thing I saw was a middle-aged man slumped over the candy counter, pulling napkins out of the stainless steel holder, sobbing uncontrollably. I still see him today. Dark hair, moustache, a bit of gray at the temples.
I’m with you, buddy. I lose it there every time. T sits and watches me, transfixed, as I mist up, then start blubbering. And he’s dry as a dead dingo’s donger. (Sorry, I saw that line in The Economist a while back and it just stuck.) That scene just doesn’t do it for him. He says he gets more choked up when Moonlight Graham is standing there on the gravel, knowing that if he crosses over to pull that hot dog out of the kid’s throat, he can never go back. But he crosses anyway.
“Hey, rookie! You were good.”
So T chokes up… but doesn’t shed a tear. This got me thinking. When have I actually seen him cry? Let’s see… we first met the year Field of Dreams was released, we started dating officially in ’91… I’m thinking, I’m thinking… yes, I think it was when his dog – the dog he grew up with and who was even more of a brother to him than his own brother – had to be put down. I was there with them in the vet’s office and I’d brought a roll of paper towels with me. Good call. Years passed, we moved here, and we got the call from the vet after the exploratory surgery on our Boxer. He hadn’t known my Barbara Ayn as long as I had, but when he heard that it was pancreatic cancer and that there would be no point in bringing her out of the anesthesia, he slumped over the same way the guy in the movie theater did.
He has cried over our dogs. When he was protecting them from that pit bull, he took the brunt of the attack and spent the night in the emergency room getting stitched back together. He was torn open, covered in blood, and he didn’t cry then. And as much as he hates needles – and there was a lot of sticking going on that night – he didn’t cry about that, either.
So I can’t help but be reminded of another movie. Bambi. My other sister was dating the guy who would be her first husband and they took me to see the re-release of Bambi at the 400 Theater in Chicago. At that point… “Your mother can’t be with you anymore” … some guy a couple rows behind us just starting giggling. He couldn’t stop. He was guffawing, tears streaming down his face. I remember my sister wanted her boyfriend to do something. Something that would make him stop laughing and set his sorry ass straight.
“You want me to beat him up?”
It was a defining moment. I was six years old and I was witnessing something important. What was a man to do? Cry when Bambi’s mother is killed? I could tell from my sister’s reaction that laughing wasn’t the appropriate response. But if a guy cried, could he be tough enough to beat the stuffing out of a guy who was laughing? So what, precisely, did a woman want? A guy that would cry along with her, or a guy who would knock another guy’s Raisinets out of his mouth?
I was confused. I’m still confused. Like Laura, I have to wonder: When exactly is it appropriate for a man to cry?
Maybe over children, over parents, over best buddies, over best canine friends. Over soldiers slain in battle and maybe, at some point, over you. But on the Senate floor?
“It is time for you to stop all of your sobbing
Yes it’s time for you to stop all of your sobbing
There’s one thing that you gotta do
To make me still want you
Gotta stop sobbing now
Yeah, stop it, stop it
Gotta stop sobbing now…”
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