10 kinds of crazy

So last month, something super weird happened to me.

 (I'm NOT pregnant...just so you know.)

 

 I've never been the super emotional type. I can probably count the number of movies I've cried in on one hand (And that list does not include "Charly"). But I do have a bit of a heart. When I do cry in movies it is always over strange things. In You've Got Mail when Kathleen Kelly is in her shop for the last time reminiscing about her mother I always get choked up. And let's not even talk about the time I went to the drive-in movie of Toy Story 3 and had tears streaming (Streaming!) down my face when the final credits rolled.

 

Anyway, my past behavior in no way prepared me for what happened this last month.

 I now present to you the non-comprehensive list of all the reasons I cried in the last month. (this will be brutal)

 

1. During one of my classes (on campus) a girl in my class was talking about a 6th grader she works with that her teacher doesn't like very much. She talked about how she's tried to make the kid feel special and loved every day she's in the classroom because she can just tell that they need a little extra special attention. As she's talking, I have wetness pooling in my eyes. And it was serious business because I was about to cry in lecture over someone else's story that included people I knew nothing about. I had to duck my head real low to avoid anyone noticing and try not to blink. It was embarrassing.

 

2. My little niece was out playing with some big kids and trying to be bossy (because that's what 3 year olds do). I was standing back a ways observing the situation. The kids had climbed up in a tree and she was standing at the base of the tree telling them to come down. One of the boys in the tree started yelling rude things down at her telling her to go away and that they didn't want her to play with them.

I sat back and watched all this happen and didn't step in at all. I don't know why I didn't just do something about it but I think it's because it was kind of a defining moment for me. As I stood back watching and seeing the look of surprise on her face as she faced rejection for the first time it just broke my heart in two. I realized that no matter how much I love that little girl and think she's about the most adorable thing on the planet, not everyone thinks so, or at least treats her as such. And I realized that I was there then and could step in but she won't always have someone there to fight her battles for her. And I wondered why the heck we don't just treat each other right all the time because everybody has somebody who thinks they are great and maybe we should all just try to see everybody through that somebody's eyes.  

Anyway...I put a lot of thought into that and it makes sense in my head, but not so much in type form.

Eventually I did step in and grab her hand and tried to wipe that sad look off her face by pointing out some pretty flowers and feeding her some yummy dessert (the cure to end all woes). But this just really broke my heart and has made me think a lot over the last month.

(The crying didn't come until I tried to recount the story for Kolton a few days later. Just so you know.)

 

3. And again...in lecture. It was a different class but still on campus and I still got a little weepy. My teacher was talking about how instead of punishing the whole class for a student's misbehavior, you should reward the entire class when the student sticks to a good behavior plan you have set out with them. Instead of everyone getting angry with the kid when a class privilege gets taken away because of one kid's mistake, they are cheering them on and encouraging them when the entire class gets ten minutes of extra recess on Fridays because the kid turned in all of his homework that week. As my teacher was giving us this counsel I got a little teary-eyed because I just thought that this was the best strategy I had ever heard of and that kid would feel so special and well-liked and I just really loved it a lot.

4. One morning I woke up in the middle of a horrible awful dream. Instead of being relieved, I started crying. The dream was that horrible awful and scary. Kolton couldn't understand why I was crying and I couldn't understand why I was crying and it was just kind of a weird way to start the day. Eventually I was able to get it out of my head and move on, but it was a rough couple of minutes.

Now this is probably waaay too much information for anyone about my spastic emotional state, but it was just such a crazy funny-ish time because I'm really not a cry-er and I think I'm getting more soft-hearted all the time. Which is good/bad.