tear jerking - Delia

A group of writer buddies (notice I didn't say novel friends) who shall remain nameless got together this weekend and spent a lot of time talking.  I won't write about that get together, because someone claims she called dibs on that subject.  So, instead, I'll expand on a topic brought up during that get together of people-who-we-don't-know's conversation.

What is your crying threshold?  What is that little thing in a movie that'll set your waterworks going?  I'm not a big crier and tend to be a bit cold-hearted.  There's not a lot that sets me off, mostly because I tend to avoid things I know will trigger the tear ducts.  A movie starring a dog?  Forget it, I KNOW that pooch isn't going to live to see the end credits.  Anything by Nicholas Sparks?  Nope, not gonna go there.  I refuse to watch a movie knowing I'm going to come out of it depressed.  I've never seen Titanic.  I KNOW the boat is going to sink, why put myself through that?  But, every once in awhile, something sneaks up on me and my eyes go all juicy.  Man, I hate when that happens.

It's not the normal things that'll do it to me either, someone dying, a love story gone bad, you know, that kind of thing.  It's worse.  Those rah-rah 1940's war support movies tend to touch me off.  The love of country, the patriotism, the thought of those boys going off to experience hell on earth, maybe to never return home.  It chokes me up all the time - which may also explain why I tend to get teary-eyed at the beginning of parades when the VFW guys come marching by with the flags.  It's not the serious drama either, I got all choked up during a Betty Grable musical once.  I cry during Casablanca, not when Rick and Ilsa say goodbye like normal people do, but when the crowd sings the French National Anthem at Rick's Place.

But, my Achilles heal, the thing that gets me every time, all I have to do is try to tell someone about it and I start crying, comes from a very unexpected place.  It's the very last 2 minutes of the pilot episode of the sit-com Raising Hope.  If you're not familiar with the show, it's about a young man, Jimmy, who unexpectedly has fatherhood thrust upon him.  Jimmy's parents were teens themselves when he was born and just sort of bumbled their way through parenthood.  Anyway, in the scene, Jimmy is trying to get his new baby to sleep and she keeps crying.  Finally his parents come in and say they'll do for her what they always did to stop him from crying as a baby.  The father takes out his guitar and he and the mother sing Danny's Song (even though we ain't got money, I'm so in love with you honey) to quiet the baby.  Then it flashes back to the parents as teens singing for their own baby son.  (shoot, I'm starting to tear up again!)  Whenever I think of it, I imagine the two scared teenagers, just trying to do the best they can in the situation they're in, nothing but hope and love keeping it all together and I just get all mushy and have to go looking for a Kleenex.

So yeah, now you know what sets me off.  How about you?  Do you have something that'll get ya every time?