Have a Good Cry

I have a very dear friend who will periodically cry in public; and I don't mean slam her thumb in the car door, leaving it dangling by a shred of tissue, then cry. I don't mean she'll stub her toe, or experience great emotional trauma of some sort; and as a result: cry.

I mean, she'll literally just cry - for no apparent reason and for an extended period of time - much longer than you might expect for say, a funeral attendee, a newborn birthing, a "cotton: fabric of our lives" commercial, or even a wedding. She'll start crying, then continue to cry for so long that she'll be forced to go about her daily tasks whilst weeping profusely.

No kidding. I have no idea how she keeps a job. In my opinion you don't want to walk into your attorney's office and find the staff weeping profusely on a regular basis -it erodes the confidence.

One day we went to dinner and mid-way through the meal tears began absolutely streaming down her cheeks. Everyone sat for a moment in stunned silence, mouthing "WHAT DID YOU SAY TO HER, YOU ASS?" to each other and looking down suspiciously at the fish. Noticing that a pall had fallen over the table, she looked up from the small puddle that was forming in her plate, smiled bravely and sobbed "P P P P leease p p p p p paaassss the p p p ppeppper."

She then continued to weep and sniffle throughout the remainder of the meal while periodically looking over at me to say "WHAT?! You've never seen a woman cry before?" like I am the unstable one.

I didn't follow-up further on the nature of her, ahem, "disorder"; mostly because I lack faith in my ability to completely divine what might cause such a confluence of conflicing emotions to arise in a person. I just haven't quite grasp what it is that could reduce an otherwise healthy person to such a state.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I managed to run my new boat up against the corner of John Willis' boat dock and scratch the living devil out of the nice, totally un-scratched, sparkly paint. Its not just "scratched," its gouged. The boat has been gouged and I did it.

As it happened, I felt a giant heaving sob well up inside of me.

Fortunately, I managed not to cry on the outside, but I finally understood what Sobbing Samantha goes through on a daily (yes, daily) basis.

As the gouging incident occurred I suddenly felt very ashamed of myself for comments like "damn it; she's ruined another shirt", "lookout! she's sprung a leak", "heads up on the mascara migration" and even "Oh man, you can't make a sammich in this place without somebody sobbing all over you."

So, my apologies. Grace and peace to you, Sam. May your nose never redden, may the wind blow-dry your eyes, may plentiful supplies of Kleenex and Visine follow you wherever you may go, and may your emotional boat go forth un-gouged.