Superficial things I can’t discuss without crying
This post was inspired by Paige and my sister visiting on Thursday and the three of us talking about books and things and making each other sniffle:
1. The ending to Good Night, Mr. Tom (this book is FABULOUS but my god, the ending! The closet!)
2. This scene in Toy Story 2 (even in Arabic it chokes me up)
3. This song by Jane Siberry, which I’ve written about before, Gospel According to Darkness (I’ll upload it sometime)
4. The very beginning of the stageplay The Lion King where the animals come down the aisle and the music is amazing and the artistry of the puppets is amazing and the whole goddamn thing is amazing and I started crying then and didn’t stop ’til we left the theater.
5. Reading through these quotes (my mother and I often bonded over episodes of Designing Women — feminists, we)
Now I’m all verklempft.
My sister likes to bring up that Toy Story 2 scene because just thinking about it can make me cry, especially if I’m with her and we’ve been laughing a lot so I’m already kinda hysterical. (It’s the way she snuggles down close to her little girl! And then she’s in the trash! My GOD! It’s heart-wrenching!)
Here’s another thing to do for sport. There’s this terrible picture book. It’s terrible! Especially if you have father issues. It’s about a little girl who dances and her father loves to watch her dance, which is all really moving with this beautiful illustrations. But then at the end she’s an adult and he dies and she’s in there while he’s dying and one last time she dances for him and that’s bad enough. Even though it’s maudlin and ridiculous, it will make you cry. And then! And then you read the front of the book and the pictures in the book were inspired by pictures of a real live little girl who died tragically in a car accident! And then! And then again! The proceeds of the book go to some child abuse foundation! The sobbing never ends! So one day I happen to pick this up in the bookstore and am sobbing (but trying to do it quietly, which means my throat just closes up and aches) then my friend comes to look and I hand it to her and she starts crying. Then our third friend wanders over and we make her read it and she cries, too. It’s ridiculous. I felt like I did watching Mr. Holland’s Opus because I was thinking, “This is so manipulative! Sheesh!” and I’m crying into my popcorn anyway. That’s how this book is.
Oh and one more thing that makes me cry just to talk about it but it’s funny. There’s a scene in my new favorite PMS days movie, Carla and Connie (perfect double feature with Camp) where the women are singing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” which makes me cry anyway. (I even used to cry while stair-stepping to Madonna’s disco version — what can I say? I love me the showtunes!) So in this scene they’re singing this part, “But all you have to do is look at me / To know that every word is true…” the music swells and then, “DON’T CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA!” And the whole audience of showtune loving queens stands up with their arms over their head, a la Eva Peron herself. Love it love it!
So what ridiculous things make you choke up?
It just occurred to me, just now, how completely bizarre it is for our culture to guilt-trip us over abandoning our toys. How strange is it that we insist on personifying the things that belong to us … even taking it one step further to imply that our things MISS US when we’re gone? Are we a society of guilt or what?
Before, I always completely accepted the notion. I have now had an epiphany. Right here in your comments section.
We must be kindred spirits! That scene in Toy Story 2 always makes me cry too, and I was emotionally exhausted after seeing the stage show of The Lion King!
There are three picture books that I can’t read to my children without sobbing: Old Pig, Wilrid Gordon McDonald Partridge and Koala Lou. They’re horribly manipulative, but I still can’t help it.
How’s this for ridiculously maudlin? When I was pregnant with my middle daughter, I used to *weep* every time I saw the Goodbye Song from Bear in the Big Blue House. It seemed so tragic, saying goodbye to dear friends. I can only blame the hormones.
I can barely keep my composure at the Lion King. That first scene is a killer. I worked at the Wexner Center when they had the Julie Taymore show up and I hadn’t even seen the LK live yet and every time I gave a tour I got a little choked up at the music and costumes in the gallery. When I finally saw it live, it was completely overwhelming!
I’m not even going to talk about the scene in Toy Story so I don’t have a nervous breakdown. But I was just listening to the cast recording of that first song and even just listening to it makes me cry. It is coming here again next year and I can’t wait to take Bug. I’ve seen it twice and it is just crazy amazing.
And I love Connie and Carla. LOVE IT.
Oh, Mr. Tom!!! That is one of my all-time favorite books. I’ve read it at least three times. It is just so “full.”
Two picture books I can’t read without crying are The Little Match Girl and A Story for Bear. I can’t think of the authors off-hand, but they are treasures.
The beginning of the Lion King! Yes! Goodnight Mr. Tom!!! YES! That book haunted me for YEARS after I read it in my youth. Jane Siberry! YES!!! MY FAVORITE TRACK!
Ok, I got a little excited. I haven’t seen Toy Story 2 but now that’ll be next on my list.
Embarassing: Extreme Makeover, Home Edition. The show’s gotten WORSE as time has gone on. It’s no longer about the construction of the house, or the arguments between designers, or a last-minute building crisis; it’s just the Design Team repeating themselves docu-drama style about how NEEDY and DESERVING these WONDERFUL, SELFLESS PEOPLE are. The music is manipulative, the camera angles, the editing — ALL OF IT. But I STILL fall for it.
That coffee commercial where the boy comes home from college makes me cry EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Many children’s books get me, especially if it’s an adoption book. A Mother For Choco especially gets me. (Hannah is now old enough to notice that Mama’s voice gets all weird, but not enough to realize that I’m crying. If I did, she’d probably try to comfort me, which would make me cry MORE.)
I freaking leave the room during that Toy Story 2 scene. I have a hard enough time throwing away any toy with a face as it is — that song just about gives me a seizure.
The end of the book Chrysanthemum, where Mrs Twinkle says if her baby is a girl they’d like to name her Chrysanthemum.
“Chrysanthemum blushed. She beamed. She bloomed. Chrysanthemum, Chrysanthemum, Chrysanthemum.”
::goosebumps::
Pretty much everything chokes me up these days, I’m sure it’s age.
But recently I read “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” on a plane back from Atlanta, and I came off the plan with tears rolling down my face and my nose running. Oh, my, that did it for me.
Bambi’s mum dying, Dumbo missing his mother, That tv show where they rebuild the house for a poor family with that darling man who has the loud voice,ANY show where there is a lovely mother who is nice to her kids. Posts on blogs where an adoptive family is loving to their child’s original family.
I am easily swayed by kindess.
What does it say that I felt a “little twinge” just based on your description of that book?
(Can you even believe I’m commenting again?!) Just yesterday I couldn’t believe that I was crying (almost, sort of, because really I don’t cry much) (at books and such; in real life I cry constantly) at the end of the American Girl movie about Samantha when the uncle and aunt adopt the three poor girls and the youngest, who hasn’t spoken in the entire movie, speaks. I mean, that is RIDICULOUS.
Toy Story follows in the tradition of The Velveteen Rabbit, The Happy Prince (by Oscar Wilde), Black Beatuy (of course) and Hans Christian Anderson tales inwhich Steadfast Tin Soldiers, Little Match Girls, Christmas Trees, and things like pots and pans are discarded as rubbish. When I was a kid, I started worrying about my old toys and now that I’m an adult, I’m devastated over their loss.
Try looking at an old Sears Christmas Wish Book without big old pangs of bittersweet washing over your heart.
How about that scene in Billy Elliot, where the father, a British coal miner on strike, has to take apart his deceased wife’s piano and burn it so they can be warm at Chrsitmas? And then if that wasn’t enough, the father goes to work as a scab to ensure his son can achieve his dream of dancing?
And when I saw Lion King this year on Broadway, I wept and wept as soon as the first note began. I am weeping now as I write and think of it.
Pink
Wow, I’m gonna have to catch that Lion King Musical. I’ve seen so many people mention it lately. Must be good.
) Oh, several months ago I caught a Little House marathon and cried myself silly.
I was going to mention the Velveteen Rabbit, but Leslie beat me to it. That’s one of my favorite children’s books. There are so many books & movies that reduce me to a blubbering itiot. My husband actually cried over one of those Extreme Makover episodes (he’ll hate that I mentioned that