But somewhere between my Where the Red Fern Grows weep fest and college, I stopped crying while reading books or watching movies. I don't know if it's my heart of stone, or if I just didn't encounter anything cry-worthy for years and years. But I don't remember anything but intense teenage angst bringing me to tears in high school. Not even heart-wrenching stuff like Dead Poet's Society, or The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
However, in the past two or three years, I've made a complete one eighty. Now, just about anything can get me weeping. And I mean anything. The Vow, The Help (book and movie), the final scenes of Lord of the Rings Return of the King, The Muppets, We Bought a Zoo, the new Anne Frank movie, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Harry Potter 7.2. I can think of at least a dozen movies in the past two months that have gotten my tear ducts working. And even crazy cheesy things get me now. There is this silly Christmas movie called The Christmas Shoes that my mom loves. We always mock her for crying every time we watch it. But this year I cried too. I knew exactly how it was going to end. And I knew that they were shamelessly manipulating my emotions when they played the Christmas Shoes song while the little boy is trying to buy a pair of beautiful shoes for his dying mom. But nothing within me could stop the tears from coming.
I think it all started a couple years ago when I saw Bridge to Terabithia for the first time. The convergence of nostalgic YA lit and a best-friend-dies storyline had me weeping uncontrollably. And I haven't been the same since.
2 comments:
This reminded me of Sleepless in Seattle. I couldn't find the scene on youtube where Meg Ryan and Rosie O'Donnell's characters are talking about the commercial with the big red bow, but this made me think of that.
Confession: sometimes even movie trailers make me cry.
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