So I Cry at Movies

Even comedies. There's something about the story and trying to make it real for the 2 hours I'm watching that gets to me.

Juno, for example. Dave and I snuggled up on the couch one night to watch Juno. We had heard that it was really clever and funny and that we'd enjoy it. LITERAL SOBBING ensued. If you don't know, that movie is about a high school girl who gets pregnant and gives her child up for adoption to a woman who is infertile. I mean, c'mon, guys! FUNNY?! I really had a hard time with that one. Dave looked at me at the end of the movie, me with a red splotchy face and swollen eyes, he half-smiled and said, "oh Steph. This was supposed to be funny."

The first time I cried in a movie was around age 10... watching Harriet the Spy. That may seem totally ridiculous to you, because it really seems ridiculous to me. The only part of the movie that I can even recall is the sad part. Poor Harriet gets bullied at school a lot, and at one point a group of girls dump paint all over her. It's so very sad, as far as I can remember.

My mom talks about watching the movie Riding in Cars With Boys, starring Drew Barrymore with me. We were in the theater, and she thought one part was really funny and looked over at me and I, of course, was crying and she didn't understand what was so sad. I don't actually remember this scene or anything else about the movie, but I believe my mom. I think I was about 13. Hormones, anyone?

So yesterday Dave and I decided to go see Karate Kid at the second-run theater down the street from us. All movies are $1.50 so we go there often. There's a scene in the movie where Jaden Smith (who is so so cute! Like, if anything happens to Will and Jada, I call dibbs on his adoption, cute) is hiding from some seriously mean kids, he's in a new place, he doesn't have any friends yet, and he's telling his mom he doesn't want to live in China anymore. LITERAL SOBBING, friends. I was a complete wreck. I kept thinking about myself as a kid, at a new school with no friends, sitting by the corner of the fence wishing someone would ask me to play. It's a rough thing to be young. But I just wanted to see a cute movie, not take a trip back to the root of my insecurities... man, Karate Kid.