Thirteen Tears

My first-ever Thurs­day Thirteen.

Thir­teen Things about Patrick Johan­neson

1. Read­ing the nov­el Cir­cuit of Heav­en* by Den­nis Dan­vers, there was a sec­tion that brought a tear to my eye. I could­n’t believe it. I had nev­er cried over a book before.
2. See­ing my wife in her wed­ding gown on our wed­ding day also brought a rush of emo­tions that includ­ed a cou­ple of tears.
3. Read­ing Stephen King’s The Dark Tow­er, which was the cul­mi­na­tion of a fif­teen-year odyssey for me as a read­er, there was a sec­tion that brought the tears welling up, just a lit­tle bit. With­out any spoil­ers, I’ll say that it was in the sec­tion “In This Haze of Green and Gold”.
4. Espe­cial­ly when paired with Michael Whe­lan’s paint­ing of the forest.
5. Get­ting hoofed in the jew­els on the play­ground in about grade 3. That was an eye-open­er. (They can’t all be sappy.)
6. On our way out of town one day, we were lis­ten­ing to CBC radio, which was play­ing stuff from the pre­vi­ous year’s Win­nipeg Com­e­dy Fes­ti­val. Brent Butt’s rou­tine had me laugh­ing so hard I could­n’t see. I actu­al­ly had to pull the car over to wipe the tears from my eyes.
7. Wak­ing up from a dream that my home was burn­ing, and all my friends were stand­ing around, unwill­ing to help me, brought a del­uge of fright­ened and frus­trat­ed tears.
8. Wip­ing out on a bike when I was about sev­en, I think, I man­aged to skin my knees, the heels of my hands, and I end­ed up with a nose­bleed too. That was the absolute cap­per. I cried all the way home (I think it must’ve been about three-quar­ters of a block).
9. Watch­ing the extras on my new Seren­i­ty DVD, I laughed so hard I cried. Nathan Fil­ion (Mal) went a lit­tle nuts in one of the scenes, deliv­er­ing gib­ber­ish with a straight face. And in a delet­ed scene, Inara tells Mal that she hopes he “is rein­car­nat­ed as a polyp”. After a beat, he says, “Is that good?”
10. In the musi­cal Les Mis­érables, there’s a bit towards the end where Jean Val­jean, Epo­nine, and Fan­tine sing that “to love anoth­er per­son is to see the face of God”, and every time–every sin­gle time–that line brings a lump to my throat and a tear to my eye. I could­n’t tell you why.
11. Wak­ing up after my splenec­to­my at the age of six, all alone in a room full of tow­els, I could­n’t find my Mom. It scared the crap out of me. I bawled till a nurse came (which prob­a­bly was­n’t that long, but when you’re six years old, alone in a room full of tow­els, any time at all is an eternity).
12. Dodge­ball, com­plete­ly con­trary to my expec­ta­tions, made me laugh till I wept. My broth­er-in-law want­ed to see it, so we went along. It was a great “shut-down-your-brain-and-laugh” film, and I thor­ough­ly enjoyed it.
13. Remem­ber­ing some of these items for this list made me feel like I might tear up at some point. Espe­cial­ly #10. I am appar­ent­ly a suck­er for that line…

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1. Doug

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* A sort of futur­is­tic, uploaded-per­son­al­i­ty riff on Romeo and Juli­et.