Louisville Slugger

Sometimes I Cry Because I Am So So Happy

In what appears to be a growing journalism trend where the writer bypasses research and poses a question instead of delivering information, I read a particle a few days ago in which the aught-er asked his readers to explain why people cry when they laugh. I returned the aught-er’s effort by asking more questions. Do you also wonder why people cry when peeling onions, facing the sun, yawning, or battling foreign objects in the eye area?

I consider myself somewhat an expert on tears. My credentials, for those who might question this determination, are as follows:

^ My maternal grandfather and uncle cried every time they laughed.

^ A paternal uncle cried at weddings and after his second highball every Christmas Eve.

^ I cried for three straight days once and think, even if that is not a record, it deserves special recognition.

^ Several highly-specialized ophthalmologists have examined, prodded, x-rayed and MRI’d my eyes and concluded that they are sufficiently dry to warrant permanent plugs in all four tear ducts and a lifetime of bankrupting prescriptions.

^ I can almost recite Iyanla Vanzant’s poem, Yesterday, I Cried and I have read the entire book more than once.

^ I enjoy the benefits of crying so much that I schedule cries if too much time passes between spontaneous one.

^ My granddaughter respects my crying wisdom enough to turn to me for advice. *

Before stressing myself with the gruesome task of typing tears in my search engine box and consulting the fact monster, I flung myself on the proverbial limb, resolved that the body produces tears without emotional involvement (as in the onion, sun, yawn, and foreign object examples), and brazenly put laughter-associated tears in that same category. Even though laughter is a response to an emotion, I believe my laughing tears are more reflexive than physic.

After doing basic research, I am not sure all experts agree with me. However, even without the benefit of chemical protein testing, I am sticking with my belief for now since I am not the only one to question the wikipedia report. I am a hearty laugher, and think the pressure-in-the-head-causing-an-overflow-of-basal-tears explanation works much better than the I’m-moved-to-tears rationalization for my laughter-induced tears. Besides, a real cry requires a coordinated effort of emotions, cells, and glands, and I am quite sure I am not focused enough to carrying that out while I am enjoying myself.

* Bonus grandchild story

My four-year-old granddaughter surprised me when she left her toys to come sit beside me on the couch and watch the television special about Oprah’s Leadership Academy For Girls. She listened intently to the applicant interviews and watched the docudrama profiles of their histories. When the selected students were shown their new school and home, and a few expressed excitement over having showers, Tatum stopped breathing and looked up at me.

“Gramma, do you ever cry because you are just so so happy?” she finally asked.

I blinked away my tears and assured her that I often cry when I am so so happy.

She smiled, said she does too, and released her own little river of tears.

Double bonus definitions:

basal tear – protective (lubricate)
reflex tear – response (onions, foreign objects)
physic tears (weeping or crying) – different chemicals in these tears

REMBA Alert Successful: Hope Not Found For Silver Street Elementary School

On February 28, 2007, I published a REMBA Alert asking the public to assist with the non-search of the hopelessly missing. The outpouring of non-assistance was overwhelming and I am happy to report evidence that item 3 (Hope for the poor children of the Indiana Elementary School after their principal bragged that GWB is coming to visit because they have improved "every year since the implementation of NCLB", and then said the students are asking every man in a suit if he is the (p)resident) will never be found.

Last night, Tony Duffy, Principal of Silver Street Elementary School explained to the public how he thought the White House phone call was a prank. He asked if the caller was with Candid Camera, or Punked; suggested it might be a radio station.

After repeating a number of his silly statements for us on the local news, he closed with the big question he had asked the White House caller: “Is there people laughing at me somewhere?”

I hope Silver Street Elementary has a copy of Is Our Children Learning on hand for each student.

REBMA ALERT: Please Do Not Try To Find the Following

Unlike its popular and successful counterpart, the REBMA alert will not seek assistance or publish pictures. REBMA represents lost causes and admits any effort to recover the missing would be futile.

If you think you see any of the following, please turn away and have your eyes examined as soon as possible. It is doubtful any of them truly existed in the first place.

1) The reason anyone gives credence to Anna Nicole/Vickie’s drugged out suggestion that her mother, Virgie Arthur, is unfit to see Dannielynne when Anna Nicole left Daniel with Virgie the first seven years of his life and claimed he turned into a perfect kid.

2) The shred of honesty a couple of people still believed possible for the Bushes before this week when George said things are going well in Iraq and Laura expressed disappointment that some people are discouraged by the one bombing a day.
(Thanks to Jon Stewart for his “a bombing a day keeps the doctor away” comment.)


3) Hope for the poor children of the Indiana Elementary School after their principal bragged that GWB is coming to visit because they have improved “every year since the implementation of NCLB”, and then said the students are asking every man in a suit if he is the (p)resident.

4) Sanity for Judge Larry Seidlin who:

*started out pretending he knew what a weasel Howard Stern (the unemployed, gold-digger, not the successful talk show host) was
*and then later broke down and forgot that
-Stern might have contributed to the death of the woman whose body he was fighting for,
-definitely helped make the decision to bury her son in the Bahamas while Anna Nicole’s mental state was questionable at best,
-and is holding a child that doesn’t belong to him hostage in order to get the money he thinks he deserves.
*completely let the fact that Anna Nicole had been in a similar situation and chose to have her husband’s body cremated and divided – which should have been some clue about what she would consider fair in this situation.

5) Better logic for the goofball who said the economy is cooking the evening before the biggest one-day drop in the market in years.

MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT (and call for help) – Courier Journal Does Not Have Time to Speak With Me

As I lay soaking in the tub this weekend, totally unaware of my latent yearning to subscribe to the Courier-Journal, the phone rang. I decided to hop out and answer that ringing phone, since my answering machine did not pick up and a close friend was in intensive care.

Fortunately, it was good news. Someone in the Courier-Journal sales department had received the psychic message I had inadvertently sent and called me. The call went as follows:

Me: Hello

Caller: Nothing

Me: Hello

Computer voice: Hello. This is a sales call. Our representatives are busy at the moment and will call you later.

Me: (a bunch of stuff I can’t say here unless I flag this for adult content)

After thinking about my rude behavior, I realized I should do something to make up for cussing at that recording. If the Courier-Journal cares enough about me to let me know when they do not have time to speak with me, I should return that favor.

I have called them (502) 585-1763 three times so far today to let them know I am too busy to talk but will call back later.

If anyone else is looking for a Random Act of Kindness activity, I hope you will let them know when you don’t have time to speak with them.

Beware: Dog Eating Shark Attacks In Kentucky

This child is not distraught because it is 39 degrees outside and she has no clothes. Nor is she concerned about the red marker stains on her face, the bruise on her scrawny leg, or the fact that her grandmother pulled her bangs back with an ugly clip and then got out the camera.

Being stuck overnight with an evil gramma who refuses to get the Chutes and Ladders game from the car until morning did not elicit half as much sorrow. She even managed to smile (actually beam a few times) when the demanding gramma forced her to help carry in groceries and cook dinner.

A dire situation much worse than anything the average four-year-old child will ever experience is responsible for this sadness. First, the gramma lost her memory. Despite multiple reminders, she was unable to remember anything about a previously unknown cousin who showed up at Chucky Cheese with a new puppy for this grandchild on her birthday. The cousin’s name meant nothing to this senile grandmother and the perfectly replicated yipping of the puppy did nothing to jog her memory.

The hand-to-the-head distress came when the gramma swore that no one bothered to tell her when a shark snuck into the little girl’s room and ate the puppy. This gramma is waiting for morning to make an appointment with a good therapist to find out what happened to her memory.

Six children and four adults—ten members of one family--died from smoke inhalation in a house fire in Bardstown, Kentucky on Tuesday night. Before the overwhelmed, desolate, surviving family had finalized funeral arrangements; Westboro Baptist Church had already organized the protest for this funeral.

Shirley Phelps-Roper, a member of the church led by Fred Phelps, cited one of their typical reasons for protesting funerals, “To show that their deaths are God's punishment for a "filthy" nation that has disobeyed "His will." The Southern Poverty Law Center declared them a hate group, the Anti-Defamation League monitors them, and they are enough to make any sane person admit that God does create garbage.

Those not familiar with this Topeka, Kansas traveling compost heap should check out their websites: GodHatesFags.com, and GodHatesAmerica.com, and other sites expressing condemnation of homosexuals, Roman Catholics, Swedish Muslims, Jews, and other groups. While not known to be directly connected to the Christian Identity movement, many of Phelps' sermons reflect the same warped principles.

In an unfortunately completely unrelated story, officials used explosives to free a barge that has been stranded at the McAlpine Dam nearby since January 16. If I ruled the world, the explosives would catch the Westboro group as they travel across the Ohio River in the back of their poster and hate filled pick-up truck to get to the Bardstown funeral.

Also, if I ruled the world, the WHAS announcer who reported this story would look at the word Bardstown, realize there is not a letter ‘g’ anywhere in the word, and would stop saying Bargetown. She would also know that the city she lives in and speaks for is named after King Louis, not King Lua, and ville rhymes with Bill, not bull, and that there is not now and never has been a letter ‘h’ in the word Hurstbourne, so that word should not be pronounced Hurshburn. And, that letter on the end of Broadbend is a D, not a T. They don’t even look alike. Get it straight. Please.

Sorry. I will return to my original religious rant.

Tax dollars support sickness masquerading as art at Sundance Film Festival Scared? That has to be the purpose of this latest sensationalized headline from the AFA (possibly in the running for most dangerous group in my opinion, since they are almost as misguided as the Westboro cult and much larger) targets PBS. They are asking their million cult members to email their Senators and Representatives to ask that they stop supporting the National Endowment for the Arts and PBS with tax money (after all, an educated country is not easy to control).

I urge everyone to counter the narrow-minded views of this group by contacting your elected officials in support of the arts. You may do so here.