The Crying Scene

When I was a kid I dreaded Father-Son Days. I don't know where my dad got the idea that we should designate two Saturdays a month as a day for just the two of us to hang out, but whenever they were canceled, which was often, I always breathed a sigh of relief.

You think of ministers today, you picture some milquetoast in a short-sleeve madras shirt, khakis and a braided leather belt. His manner is folksy and laid back, and he probably doesn't mind if his 16-year-old son wants an earring. Pulpit-thumping warnings of eternal damnation take a backseat to tolerance and understanding. Worse, in TV shows and movies, the local preacher is an out-of-touch doofus, and more often than not, a gigantic, effeminate pussy.

My dad wasn't that kind of preacher. He was the kind of preacher who scared people, including me. He liked to tell me that he was a marine before he became a military chaplain, and anytime I committed some sort of fuck-up -- bad grades, getting caught drinking at Bible camp, forgetting to be the best at every motherfucking thing -- I was reminded that my dad was more Great Santini than Billy Graham. I used to think that, for a minister, my dad was sort of an asshole. We didn't get along so well back then.

The thing is, I conveniently overlooked the little things that indicated my dad was in fact a tremendous softy: he subscribed to the Dallas Times Herald because he felt sorry for the newsboy who had to deliver the Dallas Morning News at five in the morning (this was back when afternoon daily newspapers were still around, and it was kids on bikes who delivered newspapers). There's the time when my dad secretly went to the gas station where I worked part-time during high school and paid for the deadbeat customer I'd helped the day before (the bastard had driven off without paying; my manager told me it would come out of my paycheck). When Kelly, then Hannah, then I moved out of the house, it wasn't my mom who cried. (Mom was the stoic in our family. I've never seen her cry, and I've never once heard her apologize for anything, something that amazes me to this day).

I'm a firm believer that we are our parent's children, and much like my dad I can be sentimental to a fault. But like my mom I hate to apologize and I don't cry. Whenever some dude's female tells me her boyfriend cried when she broke up with him, I reflexively start to laugh because, you know, they're faggots.

Then again, only a fool believes in rules absolutely. So when can a man cry, you ask? Here are the exceptions:

1. Death of family member, best bud
2. The last game/retirement announcement of a childhood sports hero
3. That moment when the fanfare that accompanies the 20th Century Fox logo ends and the Star Wars theme song erupts out of the movie theater's speakers

Posted by john at June 3, 2005 02:29 AM