Danny ChaiI saw The Muppet Movie again a couple days ago. If you haven’t heard, this movie was important in my life because I started crying at the end when they sang The Rainbow Connection. Big deal because I never cried growing up. Meaning, between the ages of around 9 and 21. Never cried. At youth group retreats we’d have intense prayer sessions where the pastor is yelling at us to pray louder and people all around were crying. Not me, even if I was crying inside, if that makes any sense.
There was also one experience where I should have cried, back when I played soccer. I was dribbling the ball upfield, and there was just one defender left to beat. And as I approached, I saw him cock his leg in preparation to kick. And he started his kick, but at the very last second, I passed the ball left to a teammate. But the momentum of his leg was such that he couldn’t stop the kick and it continued until his cleat went straight to my groin. Of course, I immediately crumpled in agony. Women can’t understand this. They think, “how painful”. Men reading this are themselves twisting in physical pain. It hurt so much the pain went up to my kidneys. That, my friend, is pain.
The worst part was a couple days later when I was peeing and scabs came out. But I didn’t cry.
Point is, there were a lot of situations where I could have, should have cried, but for whatever reason, didn’t. I almost never cried. In fact it was so rare between when I was 9 and 21 that I can distinctly remember the 3 times that I did cry. One was talking to my mom sometime in high school. One was watching the Tony Campolo Urbana video at FiCS sophomore year. And the other was watching the Muppet Movie.
I know I wrote about this before but the way it happened was, I was flipping the channels on a lazy Saturday afternoon and just happened to come upon it. So I watched it disinterestedly because I had nothing better to do. I wasn’t really into it the whole time. But then at the very end, inexplicably, when the Muppets all start singing the Rainbow Connection, I find myself tearing up. It was utterly bizarre because, like I said, I never cried. So it was utterly random.
Anyway, I watched it again and I have no clue why the heck that happened. The end isn’t moving at all. At all. The last half of the movie is actually kind of slow. So I have no idea what the heck was wrong with me.
Anyway, ever since summer of 1996, a pretty fateful summer, I cry all the time now. Blubber like a baby. I’m a wuss like that.