Sob Story

Living Room
Originally uploaded by klutz67

After my 4th year of college, I lived with my parents for about 9 months. I worked 3 jobs, about 90 hours a week, and I was exhausted and nearly insane. My parents were extreeeeeemely good sports to put up with this nonsense. For some reason, I was usually home during the week in the late afternoon when my dad got home from school. He and I would go into my folks' bedroom -- he would sit in the recliner, I would kick back on the bed -- and we would watch Michael Landon's "Highway to Heaven."

If you're not familiar with "Highway to Heaven, here's a partial description from imdb.com: "Jonathan Smith is a probationary angel sent back to Earth to help people. During the series' first episode, he meets embittered ex-policeman Mark Gordon... Jonathan helps reform Mark, with the grateful Mark agreeing to become Jonathan's right-hand associate in carrying out the heavenly mission...to deliver love, understanding and humility to the people they encountered..." Most episodes were played for high drama, with maximum heartstring pluckage. This was good for my dad and me. I don't really remember talking too much during the program, but we would get to the most heart-rending moment of the show and each of us would just bawl our heads off, sniffles and sobs unacknowledged by the other. When the credits rolled, we would get up, blow our noses, and start dinner before my mom got home. We did this nearly every day.

As anyone who has watched any sort of drama with me knows, I still sob at movies and TV. [The animals get concerned when I do this, by the way. Once I start crying, each of them approaches me in turn, trying to comfort me in their own way. In fact, I can never cry for long because their immediate attention makes me laugh. ] So tonight, as I watched a TiVo'ed version of "Extreme Makover: Home Edition," I was sobbing my head off and blowing my nose handily while an entire community gave a family a new home and a new lease on life. I couldn't help but think about how my dad would be amused that, out of all the things we shared, this particular quirk would become a lifelong tradition for me. I think I'm a generally happy person, but you'd never know it if you were a fly on my wall, viewing me while I watch TV.

Anyway, that's what I've got tonight. Weird, the stuff that comes up. I have some theater paperwork to wrap up, and it's off to dreamland for me.