I had a good and hearty cry last night. I just had a terrific case of the blues, which is pretty rare for me. It was just one of those dark days, I was over fatigued and circumstances were such that it seemed highly appropriate to give in to an emotional enema.

It's perfectly natural to have a healthy bawl, now and again. Sometimes because you are nursing the blues,or sometimes for no reason at all. Stimuli will serve as the catalyst: a sappy movie, a song that reminds you of some sweet memory, a noise, a scent, a place. Sometimes the very notion of a symbolic situation is so overwhelming, you can't help having an emotional reaction to it. But not in public. I deplore the twinges of a sad emotional tug when I'm in public. It's painful to resist it. Odd facial contortions are usually my save here, although they can be easily misinterpreted as painful irregularity.

I try not to give in to tears in public and never, NEVER, at work. I always thought showing that kind of vulnerability in a competitive business environment undermines your credibility. Ironically, I work with a lot of women who don't embrace that opinion and the worst offender is Norma. She is often in tears, usually stress induced and I'm usually the one comforting her. One day, a co-worker called and indicated they could not come to the office because their dog had died. This news drove her to copious tears. I was so moved by this tender display that I called her "sweetly sentimental," a reference that she found offensive. "I'm not sentimental," she snapped, wiping the path of mascara that ran down her cheeks, "That indicates weakness. I am empathetic." Semantics.

My family laughed easily, were bawdy and fun loving. For people so expressive in this regard, it is peculiar that we did not cry in front of each other easily or often. If tears were involved, you sequestered yourself away, nun-like, in your room, or my favorite hideaway, the bathroom, till whatever jag you were experiencing passed. I still have to leave the room and make a quick trot to the bathroom during sad parts in films or if I hear a song that moves me. Old learned behavior. It surely needs to be undone.

This furtive behavior must be just my own trip. Fang has a wildly soft heart. He can be counted on to sniff and emote freely during a sad film. He has seen the final episode of M*A*S*H maybe 50 times and each time he watches it, he's dabbing his eyes with tissue. When Marv needs a good cry, he watches his old reliable weepie, "Terms of Endearment." The opening music sweeps up and he's already going for his hankie. I even saw Jewels with glistening eyes after his beloved Jack Russell, Harry, passed away.

There's an electric scene in Ingmar Bergmann's film "Fanny & Alexander." In the aftermath of the death of the family patriarch, the family stands restrained and cold, presiding over his coffin in their parlor during the wake. After the inhabitants of the house retire for the evening, the widow returns to the parlor alone and proceeds to unravel, wailing with the full breadth of her pain, howling like an animal. I always remember that scene for its cathartic truth (and well, it scared the shit out of me). Now that's a proper cry. That's the way to do it. I mean, if you're going to do it.

We caught a matinee today of "Little Miss Sunshine." I won't ruin the film for you but there was a scene where the dilapidated VW bus they're driving is gradually falling apart. The driver honks the horn to respond to another driver that's cut him off. And the horn gets stuck, emitting loud and wobbly intermittent beeps. This struck me as so wildly hilarious that I was doubled over in my seat convulsing, my face awash with tears...of laughter. The best kind