the crying game

I just read this article in the NY Times about women and crying. It talks about reasons women may be prone to crying as well as why women shouldn't do it at work. It really hit a nerve. Or my lacriminal duct.

I am a crier. If you yell at me, I will cry. If I have a fight with my friend, I will cry. If you may be wondering about the origins of this tendency, I invite you to meet my mother. If Muslims believed in Goddesses, I would christen her the Goddess of Tears. Because the woman could irrigate the Sahara Desert under any of the following circumstances:

1) A phone call from me. Any random phone call. She loves me so much she sometimes cries if I just call. I realize this makes me the luckiest person in the entire world. It also makes her absolutely insane because I'm wacko. But if loving me is wrong, then she don't wanna be right.

2) A fight with anyone. Especially a fight between my brother and me. (N.B. the grammar nazi confirms that the correct preposition following between is indeed "me" and not "I")

3) Any Jennifer Lopez movie. Either because she ultimately gets the guy or because the movie sucks that badly. Usually both.

Now that the genetic lineage of my crying has been established, let me share with you some vivid crying memories.

* Sixth grade. The entire sixth grade class took a 3 day trip to a ghetto place called Frost Valley, where we learned cross country skiing. Now that I am an 'adult' I realize this was just a flimsy excuse for the teachers to have illicit affairs and to let the kids run around and be obnoxious to each other in a venue outside of the classroom. There were two girls I was friends with - Alison and Lena. But they seemed particularly chummy on that trip and I felt left out. So I started crying and didn't stop for the entire three days. Amazingly, Lena remains one of my closest friends to this day. And for the past 15 years, she has continued to remind me of the sob fest that was Sophia circa 1991.

* Eleventh Grade. Second day of AP American History. We were supposed to write a scholarly book report over the summer and turn it in the first day of school. I got it back the second day of school. I had written it the night before it was due, and I hadn't even read the book. But come on! I was Sophia, earner of good grades, sometimes even if by magic. The very butch and daunting teacher handed me back my paper. With a 72 written on it. Holy sh*t! Surely the paper must have been graded out of 72, right? I got a C on a paper? How would I ever get into Harvard?! My life was over!! A little psycho? Sure. But I bet my life that every single person I went to college with had a similar experience at some point. Because all people who go to Harvard were anal retentive dorks in high school. And frankly through most of college. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. That's right. I said it. Whatcha gonna do?

Oh, I lost my train of thought. Sorry. Anyway. 72 on the paper. Cue the sobbing. In the middle of class. Tears and snot and stifled giggles by classmates galore. The next day, I walked into class and raised my hand during the discussion. The teacher looked at me, didn't miss a beat, and said "Yes, Ms. Weeper?" He called me Weeper for the rest of the year. Lena was also in this class. For the past 10 years, she has continued to remind me of the disaster that was Sophia circa 1996.

* Freshman year of college. I had just been dumped by my boyfriend of four months. Which, if you can recall your freshman year of college, seems like the social equivalent of an eternity. Enter the saltwaterfall, Hershey chocolate bars and Sarah McLaughlin CD. Cried straight through chemistry class. Though, at Harvard, one could easily attribute that to the pain that was freshman Chem.

Since it's late and I'm a bit sleepy, I will end this post now. It's interesting, actually. I began the post with the full intention of writing about my experiences of crying at the job while on Wall Street, and all the things I dealt with and learned. But I delved further back into my life than I thought. The second half of the post shall come tomorrow ...

*~*~

Jimmy Dugan: Are you crying? Are you crying? ARE YOU CRYING? There's no crying, there's no crying in baseball. Rogers Hornsby was my manager, and he called me a talking pile of pigsh*t. And that was when my parents drove all the way down from Michigan to see me play the game. And did I cry? NO. NO. And do you know why?

Evelyn Gardner: No, no, no.

Jimmy Dugan: Because there's no crying in baseball. There's no crying in baseball!