Tears were shed...and that's OK

It has long been debated that a man crying was a sure sign of wussiness (is that even a word?).  As we all know, "there's no crying in baseball."  If you can't name the actor who said that, I again worry that you might have been raised by wolves.  That line certainly made any public display of emotion by a man subject to even more mockery.  Bush 43 was slammed by the media for the times he shed tears, especially as he met with those that were affected by the horrific events of 9/11.  I would argue that those slams on Bush were unwarranted (the other slams, well, those were more than warranted).

I've come to realize that it's perfectly fine for a man to cry.  I'm not a cryer.  I still don't deal particularly well with lots of crying.  Ask my daughters.  Emotional, hormonal weeping jags didn't fly in our house.  But I've come to appreciate the value of what's expressed through tears.  It's an honest, spontaneous expression of one's feelings. 

It's the spontaneity of the emotion of crying and tears that I struggle with the most.  As an example, last night as I was driving here for a session, I had my iPod on shuffle and a song from one of the kids' EFY cd's came on.  Within about three seconds, tears were streaming down my face.  As I listened to the song, the tears continued to flow and here's the thing, it felt good.  And as soon as the song was over, so was the show of emotion.  I recognize it was a reaction to the spirit of the music and the lyrics.  It was all good.

It got me thinking about some other crying jags I've experienced.  Oddly, more than a few have occurred while flying.  Watching the hideous in-flight movies that I would never watch while on the ground.  I've cried at some ridiculous movies while crossing the Atlantic or the Pacific.  My most epic meltdown was watching this:

Weeping, I'm serious.  Weeping.

And the most ridiculous part is that it was the preview...the PREVIEW...that had me gutted.  The stunningly patient and mighty fine SML and I were seated in the First Class section of a Delta (don't tell Mother United!) 757, flying back to PHX after a weekend in New York City.  We'd just taken off and we were perusing the lunch menu when the creeky video monitor fired up.  I threw on my headset so I could hear and looked up to see the start of the preview of that day's in-flight entertainment - Mr. Holland's Opus.  Now, we'd seen it when it was in the theatre and thought it was fine.  No emotion watching it.  However, at 35,000 feet, as soon as I heard the first notes of the 'opus,' I started to cry.  And not just cry, but borderline heaving sobbing.  The stunningly patient and mighty fine SML looked at me as if my head had exploded.  In the middle of this unfettered display of near hysteria, the lead flight attendant came to our row to get our lunch order.  The look on her face when she saw this weeping tool in 4B was pretty priceless.  She was smart enough to say, "I'll just come back in a minute." 

And it was over in a minute.  Preview ended and I was able to pull it together.  I was then able to watch the movie without a single tear shed.  Bizarre.  Bizarre but good.  I'm OK with the occasional crying jag.  I'm not going to forced to turn in my man card because of a few falling tears but this much I know, I'm a lot more selective about what I watch while in-flight.