I think something is wrong with me. Like, clinically. I cannot, no matter how critical, cry at the right times. I can cry, a'ight? Don't get me wrong here. I'll sob my guts out when a local soup-n-sandwich joint goes out of business, or someone has left the milk out for the umpteenth time. I'll weep hysterically when a group of people comes together in a perfect moment of either flash-mobbery or spontaneous humor. I'm not an emotion-free zone. But I can't cry right. Blessed events, weddings, funerals — I got nothing. I mean I feel, okay? Those things are moving and cathartic, and I get some emotional rumblings. But I can't drum up any outward evidence, not even pretend.
As for movies, everybody can be sobbing and weeping — like when Dobby dies in HP7, or Hugh Jackman suffers and sweats and worries as Jean Valjean — and I'm just sitting there, quietly oozing saline-free verklempt-ness.
It's really not that big of a trial, beyond people looking at me like "Where's your emotion? Are you not even human?" I pretty much never have to worry about mascara rivulets all down my face, and I can speak in public without the snot flowing (unless its about something deeply personal. Then I do get the wah-wah vocal tremor, but I recover quickly.) Also, I never have those weepy girl-moments of BFF embracery and huggery and bonding-ery (all technical terms that I did not just make up.) I do bond. I just don't weep about it.
But . . . there are moments when it would be helpful to be able to cry.
Like when I get pulled over for going a wee bit too fast. Which I'm not saying I ever do, especially since my kids read this blog. But, you know, you hear stories of women getting pulled over for speeding, and they bring out the whole Weepy-Wanda bag of tricks, and the officer feels so sorry for them that he just issues a warning. Yeah. This has never worked for me.
In fact, this has never worked so well that I have become an annual fixture at the local Police Department Traffic School. It's sort of a summer tradition for me. One that I'd like to break. One I'd like to break by evoking pity in the ticket-distributing officer who pulls me over. (Or by not speeding. But you know, whatever. It's not like I do it on purpose. I'm just so right-brained I can't see the speedometer.) Sadly, I don't have the ability. I simply cannot muster the tears. If I can't cry with Argentina over Evita, how'm I going to cry for Officer Ticketron?
Sigh. It's a problem. But I know all is not lost. I did manage to evoke pity in an officer a little while back and received my first ever warning instead of a ticket. I've got it framed on the wall of my office.
I had just dropped my kid off at the local university and was feeling all sad because she'll be leaving soon for a year and a half and I'm not ready for that. Plus I was sick, and had an elbow injury which prevented me from picking up my stupid registration from the floor of my car where I dropped it when the officer asked for it. And I was in my pajamas and had a nervous youngest kid in the backseat. AND I didn't have any makeup on. I felt emotion. I felt sad and weepy. I tried to prove it. My tear-ducts grunted with the effort. But it was nada, baby. I just sat there looking pitiful in my makeuplessness and unbendableness and pajamaness. In the end, I think the officer gave me a warning just to get me off the streets so I could go take a shower.
Bless him.
I'll never forget his kindness. Truly. I needed it right then. And it must not have had anything to do with tears because I wasn't crying. Maybe it was just my face without makeup. Maybe that's all I really need for people to think I'm an emotionally sensitive person in need of compassion.
Baaahahahahahahaha! So not happening. You'll just have to trust that I feel it all on the inside. And I'll have to try to stop getting pulled over.
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