The Nerd's Eye View

The other night I had a few friends from the Couscous Collective over for dinner and a movie, as part of my silent movie kick. The evening went well and everyone enjoyed the movie (a silent German full length feature film "The Adventures of Prince Achmed"). As the night wound on most of the guests left, and eventually it was just the Young Marrieds and me. The conversation drifted to Barack Obama's electoral victory of two nights before. We had watched the returns come in together, and during his speech I had gotten insanely choked up, as had Mrs Young Married. We agreed that we had been in spontaneous tears for the rest of that night and most of the rest of the week.

aside: I have always been a little "emotional" (cf a big girl's blouse) and while the emotion of choice has typically been anger, there's also been some tears. As I get older I find that I am more and more prone to having tears sneak up on me. Consequently I get choked up at surprising (yet perhaps wholly predictable) times.

That prompted a discussion of (unusual?) things that made us weep, which is to say, movies or books that for some reason cause you to spontaneous get inappropriately emotional. So I decided to list a few (in chronological order), just as an exercise, to see if there is some sort of pattern (yes, I am an engineer):

• "A.D." (miniseries, 1985) - I was only 10 years old and was watching the scene were young Christian children are given lambskins to wear by a nice Roman who tells them they are going to play a little game. They'll pretend to be little lambs running around! The children are delighted and prance as they are sort of guided out into a courtyard, which happens to be the Coliseum. Then the mastiffs are released, their jowls already bloody from previous sport, and the scene ends as the children start to scream. I ran out of the room to my mother with tears streaming down my face at the unfairness - they were only kids! I said.


• "G.I. Joe" (series, 1985) - still 10 years old (man, how did I not get my ass kicked all day for this?) and as I watched my favorite cartoon, there was a scene where my favorite character - Snake Eyes - was nearly killed in an explosion. I started to wonder whether he'd make it or if he could be killed in some sort of incident! I mean people were firing lasers and throwing grenades all over the place! I freaked out a little and there were some waterworks before I realized it was only fiction and hence it wasn't likely that he'd die on the show.


• "Microserfs "(book Douglas Coupland, 1995) - I had this book recommended to me at Barnes and Noble (by a clerk I subsequently dated for 3 years), and read it through in a weekend. It's the first book that has ever moved me to tears, and one of the few books I felt related to.


• "Umi Says" (Mos Def, Coachella Music Festival 2005) - Mos Def and Talib Kweli were the headliners at Coachella in 2005 and I pushed up almost to the front with the Byrninator after the all the goths left once NIN was done. I am a big fan of Mos Def because he's just lyrically gifted, but even I didn't suspect that "Umi Says" would set me off.
  

  "I don't want to write this down/ I want to tell you how I feel right now ... hey, tomorrow may never come/for you and me, this life is not promised ... I ain't no perfect man/I'm trying to do the best that I can with what it is that I have .... my Umi says, shine your light on the world/shine your light for the world to see."

  
  Just typing the words right now I'm a wreck. It's very clear to me why it makes me feel the way it does, but I have a hard time expressing it. The quickest explanation I can give is that it sings my life and that recognition strikes me like a blow to the chest, since it is so rare. After all my Umi (Mama) said the same thing to me, and while I do my best I feel like I am constantly falling short of that mark.


• "Ghost Town" (film 2008) - this one is slightly cheating, since I watched this movie after breaking up with someone I cared about a lot. The movie's plot follows a particularly cold and misanthropic dentist's attempt to rid himself of a haunting by helping steer his spook's widow away from a suitor. Predictably he has to become charming in his own way, and falls in love with the girl. The part that did me in was when he admitted that he was her dead husband's agent, but that wasn't why he was trying to help, and was subsequently hit by a bus. Cheesy, I know, but at that moment I really felt for the guy, getting rewarded for finally coming out his shell with several tons of steel, rubber and fiberglass traveling at 30 mph.