I'm Not Going to Cry!

The late 80s-early 90s, the era of some of the best pop and rock music, a time when there was no Internet, and the best social networking was hanging out with friends at the mall. It was also an era of tear-jerker movies, such as Steel Magnolias, Fried Green Tomatoes...and Beaches.

Beaches was one of the first movies that made me cry (the very first one was Ice Castles). That was 1988. Here I am, 32 years later staying home a lot during the pandemic. Not unlike most of you, I'm either streaming one movie after another or listening to songs on YouTube I hadn't heard since I had big hair.

I had recently gotten an Amazon Prime account and instantly fell in love with it. I was quickly amazed at the wide selection of available movies. As I scrolled through each category, my jaw dropping to the floor at the sight of long-forgotten 80s movies such as Vibes (bonus points to the first one who can guess who starred in that).

Then a random thought came to my mind: Do they have Beaches? The next question I asked myself was, am I going to cry while watching it? 

I wanted to challenge myself. No, a better way to put it is, I wanted to see if this movie elicited the same deep, forceful emotions when I first saw it, as well as the subsequent times I saw it on video.

Let me digress here for a moment. Over the past few years, I have had a dramatic change in friendships. There was one friend in particular also liked Beaches. We imagined each other as CC Bloom and Hillary Whitney. I will plead the fifth on which character I represented. I thought this was a beautiful thing to share; I loved finally having a friend! It was to where I couldn't hear Bette Midler's "Wind Beneath My Wings" without crying. Don't get me started on hearing it on the speaker at Montgomery Ward around 1996 and waiting on a customer. For the record, I kept it together.

Time and circumstances have a way of making me more jaded, cynical, and sometimes more objective about things. That people come and go in your life is part of character development. I still hear that beautiful hit ballad at the grocery store or in a waiting room at a doctor's office. The number of tears I cried: 0.

With that in mind, I thought while watching this movie, I'd be Stoic, s if I'm watching just another movie. I found Beaches on Amazon Prime and watched it this afternoon. I remained relatively emotionless throughout the whole movie. Then when the soundtrack started playing that familiar keyboard intro to Bette Midler's song at the end...

Do I need to say anything else?

By no means do I berate myself for crying during a movie I know the ending to. That I cried, albeit a little bit, shows this movie is still making an impact, even after over thirty years since it was a hit at theaters. So a big kudos to late director Garry Marshall for making a bigger hit of a movie than he realized. I only hope that long after I publish my books, those who read them will still laugh or cry.

What movies have you seen over and over that still make you cry? Is there a certain movie you and your best friend share as your favorite? Is there one with "all the glory" and another with "all the strain?"

Perhaps you're healing from losing a friend, whether by death or betrayal. How have you healed?

On a brighter note, would you like to challenge me to see if I'll cry when I watch Steel Magnolias or Terms of Endearment? Perhaps I'll make a web site like doesthedogdie.com and call it willfayecry.com