You Can't Cry Upside Down

It has taken me years of searching and thousands of (someone else’s) dollars, but I have finally found it, it being the answer to the World’s sadness. Crying is officially a thing of the past (so long as someone strong is nearby.) My sister has recently broken up with (and subsequently gotten back together with, broken up with again, and reunited again) her boyfriend. My sister is at the age where this is not out of the ordinary, in fact it is expected (we took bets, I owe my Dad something I’m sure.)

My sister is a teenager (as you might have guessed) and as such, is incredibly hormonal, to the point of ridiculousness. I managed to go my entire life without being around women that cried (excepting my mom around anything resembling a small child doing, quite frankly, anything), and then my life exploded into a river of tears, seemingly, out of nowhere. I’ve since found myself distinctly lacking the crying girlfriend, but she was immediately (and quite forcefully) replaced by the teary eyed sister. She can cry about anything. My mother wants her to do laundry, but tells her more than once? She cries. Her boyfriend can’t come over on a Saturday because he has a baseball game? She cries. She got a bad grade on a test she didn’t study for? She cries. It’s raining? She cries. The show Doc got canceled? She cries. (It was canceled six years ago.)

Yesterday, during one of her spouts, I went a different direction with my reaction (insert something about a forest and a path less traveled), I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder. This may seem cruel at first, but imagine my surprise when…she stopped crying! I didn’t quite believe it so I kept her up there for awhile more to make sure my ears weren’t deceiving me. They weren’t! She said to me “David! Put me down, I can’t cry upside down!”

Victory.

Sweet, sweet victory.

I looked at my mother, and I could see that she too, had no idea what had just happened. She was as bewildered as my sister at my joy. “Don’t you see! Don’t you see!?” I yelled. “We’ve done it! The World will be a happy place!”

My mother cut to the core of the problem relatively quickly, “But, David,” she said, “just because people aren’t crying, doesn’t mean they’re happy.”

“But Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom,” I responded, “now we don’t have to hear their unhappiness.”

And then, I could see she finally understood.

She had raised an asshole.

“David,” my sister said, “put me down, I’m choking on my tears.”