Don't try to dig

Saturday, February 10, 2007

What makes you cry?

I've just sniffed my way to the end of another novel: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I enjoyed every page but the urge to sob was fairly overwhelming by the end. Don't think to yourself, 'Well, that's spoiled it for me now I know there won't be a happy ending.' You see, although (or maybe because) I lead a fortunate life and seldom have cause to weep in reality the slightest downturn in the fortunes of my fictional friends leads me to tears. They've only to drop an ice-cream cone down the front of their new sweater and I'm devastated. Some people (and at the risk of being sexist here I might suggest mostly females) love a good cry and actively seek out weepy movies as an outlet for their emotions. Not me. I hate to cry at the movies. I despise myself for becoming so emotionally attached to the characters in the books I read that I sob at their demise. So much pain in the world but we only cry over fiction. We can't afford to let reality touch us.

So what makes you cry? Your team losing? Peeling onions? A Sunday afternoon re-run of 'Carve Her Name With Pride?' Or just maudlin blogs?

Labels: ,

posted by Kay @ 4:42 PM  

4 Comments:

  • At February 10, 2007 10:10 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Thanks Kay for saying how I think many of us would feel after reading this book.
    At first I didn't know what to expect from this book that was being passed around the office and seemed to have a waiting list to read it. Was it going to be corny and predictable? Well I started it then realised that I did know what was going to happen but couldn't wait to finish it to see if that was what would really happen - and how. So I ended up reading it sitting in my daughter's room on the carpet next to her night light trying to read until the wee hours just because I didn't have any other time to myself to do it. I can't wait to read it again , actually, at a more leisurely pace. And, yes even some ads on TV, especially with kids in them, make me cry. Even when I saw 'An Inconvenient Truth' recently I shed a few tears then. I think those were of depair though. It has made me want to change a lot of things though. And I have already started. T

     

  • At February 13, 2007 8:52 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    What makes me cry......I'm absolutely hopeless!....I can cry at the drop of a hat. It amazes me that I have to make a concious effort not to turn to the 'hatch, match and despatch' column on the back page of the local newspaper, or I'll find myself in floods of tears at the loss of people I've never met and even tears of joy and relief reading the baby announcements from complete strangers. I am of course less sentimental when reading the wedding annoucements and have been known to mutter aloud 'silly cow - I hope she knows what she's got herself in to!'

     

  • At February 13, 2007 11:05 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Spock dying, in the reactor chamber. Doing the mind meld thing with McCoy (bones). 'You are and always will be my friend!' Gets me crying everytime I see it!!! Can u guess which trekkie sent this in?

     

  • At March 11, 2007 4:04 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    "Emotional lability" was listed in the first book I read on ME after diagnosis. So I use that as my excuse. For some reason I don't understand the thing that sets me off most of all is any drama news report or documentary about family members looking for each other or being reunited. As I come from a boringly ordinary family where no one has been adopted or separated i can't have any kind of identification with them, but the first mention of anything like that has me sniffling.

     

Post a Comment

<< Home