LESSON #3: Crying is Sometimes the Preferred Alternative

L-R: Shawn, Minnie Mouse, Tara & Jason at Disney World

As adults, most of us have become experts in taking life’s small, unexpected turns in stride.Very few daily instances inspire a reaction bigger than a smile, a slight raise of an eyebrow or a small nod of the head. Not too happy and not overly sully… that’s the key. Being a responsible member of society demands that we be temperamentally just right for the Goldilocks around us.   

Children, on the other hand, aren’t expected to filter their emotions in the same way. This lack of adult mediocrity seems to give them carte blanche to unabashedly wear their emotions… not just on their sleeve, but on their entire body. When a 4 year old is happy, it envelops them. When they’re upset, you don’t have to coax it out of them. And when a child is either extraordinarily sad or extremely happy, it often creates a very physical reaction... emotions spilling out of their tiny bodies without warning, flooding their beings one feeling at a time.

As a child, I suffered from excitement-induced sore legs, which is not nearly as endearing as it sounds. The only remedy for my excruciating pain was to have my legs rubbed, sometimes for hours, until the pain (and tears) subsided. Unfortunately for my parents, I found nearly everything exciting – a change of seasons, first day of school, birthdays, Halloween, Easter. But nothing was as exciting as Christmas. If it were the New Millennium, I’m sure my parents would have simply given me a Valium in those weeks leading to Christmas morning. But it was the 80’s, decades before medicating children with drugs became the norm… so I wasn’t even given a Panadol. Instead, they’d lovingly spend hours each night taking turns rubbing my legs, hoping I’d somehow forget Christmas was around the corner.
 

Out of five children, I was the only one who suffered with excitement-induced sore legs.

My brother Shawn had a different reaction to being excited; his emotions so big and so instant he didn’t bother with sore legs. Instead, he just cried. The more excited he got, the louder he’d cry, until he reached the enviable level of a wail. If you didn’t know him, it was easy to misinterpret his tears for something tragic. 

“Doesn’t he like the park?” a concerned passer-by might ask my parents, as Shawn’s cry would give way to hyperventilation. Problem was he liked the park too much.  

At the other end of the spectrum, when my brother Jason got excited, he’d be immediately overcome with a testosterone-filled need to hit something. Ferocious as that sounds, there was no violence to his punches. It was simply an outlet, a pure physical act… like an elbow–jerk. Imagine my parent’s initial shock when their perfectly happy cherub-looking two year old (complete with a halo of blond hair and crystal clear blue eyes) smiled broadly and, unable to contain his emotions, would punch them in the face.

“Eeeeeekkkkk!!!” he’d excitedly squeal, just mere moments before you’d be wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of your mouth. For a toddler, he had a serious right-hook.

Like Jason, Ryan also had a very physical reaction to a surge of excitement, which had my parents equally perplexed. The youngest of the brothers, Ryan preferred to express himself on a grander, more public scale through dance. Coming from a long lineage of non-dancers, we’d all marvel at his ability to break into dance anywhere, with no sense of shame. We’re not talking about a simple two-step – but a whole body interpretive dance routine, which always included a decent proportion of floor work. Music was optional, and more often than not, only played in his head.

Shekinah, the youngest of the group, wasn’t so flamboyant with her reactions. Born the poker player, her emotions were often hidden behind her eyes. The more excited she got, the wider her eyes would grow… until they would grow to be so wide that they’d stop blinking all together. In extreme bouts of excitement, her entire body would join her wide, unblinking eyes and freeze on the spot. Where other children might be cursed with excitement provoked sore legs, tears, punching or dancing…  she’d simply transform into statue, unable to move. I often suspected she stopped breathing altogether.

When it came to a child’s expressive anticipation for a trip to the park/their upcoming birthday party/ Christmas morning, my parents have seen it all. The only reprieve they had was that, because of our age gaps, they never had to deal with five overly excited children simultaneously. In fact, since puberty inevitably brought with it a sense of apathetic cool, the most they ever had to deal with was three excited children at once.

But three excited children at once would prove to be enough for a lifetime.

When I was around seven years old, my parents planned our first major family vacation to Disney World. Since it was right in the middle of the legs-crying-punching years, it’s no surprise that they decided not to tell us that we were about to visit the ‘most magical place on earth’. Instead, my parents simply packed our bags without us knowing, and loaded us into the car bound for the airport without a single explanation.

As our family station wagon turned into the airport carpark, it started to dawn on me that we weren’t just going for a long family drive to the country-side as I had assumed. Nervous about the onslaught of sore legs, tears, and face-punching while trying to navigate through Airport Security, my father swiftly announced he organized a “day of plane-flying” for us.

“Nothing exciting… just a bit of fun.”

It’s important to understand that, until I hit puberty, none of us questioned our parents. Ever. Not because we were unable to think for ourselves, but simply because we never had a single reason to think otherwise. So, though a plane ride might sound like an absurd activity to someone else, my brothers and I just went along with it.

Going through customs proved to be one huge disappointment to me. In fact, this plane-flying business was proving to be one large hassle, not even in the vicinity of “a bit of fun”. When the Airline Hostess offered me some coloured pencils and colouring book on the plane, I looked my father over, wondering if this was going to be my day’s highlight.

“Are you excited about visiting Florida?” The Hostess innocently asked.

I could sense her desperation to make me smile, but I literally had no idea what she was talking about. Suddenly, my parent’s carefully constructed plan to get us across the border without incident was thwarted in less than 15 seconds by the young, attractive Hostess: “It’s where Disney World is, you know.”

What started off as shrieks of sheer excitement and joy – the sound of three children’s combined fantasies coming true – soon morphed into hours of non-stop crying. By the time we arrived in Florida, the entire flight was exhausted.

Our Disney World extravaganza began with “Breakfast with the Stars”, an over-priced buffet style breakfast accompanied by the priceless experience to dine with actual Disney characters.  For years we had watched the cartoons and made my father mimic their voices. And here we were… mere moments away from sharing a stack of pancakes with Mickey Mouse.

“Will Mickey be there?” I asked, full of hope, as we drove through the Disney precinct towards the breakfast venue.

“He sure will!” my father answered in his best Mickey Mouse voice.

“And Goofy?” Jason asked, equally hopeful.

“You betcha!”my father exclaimed in a jovial Goofy voice, followed by his signature Goofy laugh.

“What about Donald Duck?” Shawn asked, his voice breaking on the verge of tears.

“No crying, Ok?” my father responded in his hilarious Donald Duck voice (though our father was able to impersonate all of our favourite Disney characters – his Donald Duck impression was the one that always made us laugh the most). And we laughed. We laughed harder and for longer than was necessary, we were that happy.

Breakfast delivered everything as promised, except for one thing: Donald Duck. Though I had hoped to see Donald (I secretly wondered if he actually ate eggs), his absence didn’t really bother me. But it bothered Shawn. 

By the end of breakfast, Shawn was in tears. Not the happy, excited kind we were used to, but the kind that was densely filled with disillusionment and disappointment. The type of crying that is also dangerously contagious among siblings. Within moments, all three of us were crying.

Disney World was proving to be the least happiest place on earth.

Frustrated by the prospect of our family trip being completely ruined, my father threw his arms up in frustration “we’re not even in Disney World yet!”

We all stopped crying immediately, as if on cue: there’s more?

Less than an hour later, we entered the park looking like any other happy family… two adults, three children and five big smiles. I’m sure that, if the staff at Disney knew our real selves – the punching, crying, screaming selves – they wouldn’t have let us pass through the front gate. After all, there are proper ways to act in such a joyful establishment, and I’m almost positive that it does not include crying.

Our charade as a model family was quickly shattered when Shawn spotted Donald Duck on Main Street. To him, it wasn’t a sighting of someone dressed in a character suit. It was the actual Donald Duck. The Donald Duck that skipped breakfast.

Unlike the hordes of children surrounding his favourite Disney character, Shawn didn’t run up to Donald for a hug. He didn’t cry. He didn’t even smile. Instead, he looked up at my father with a look –

A look my father had seen before. A look he hoped to never see in a public.

“No!” My father yelled, “We didn’t bring any spare pants!”

But it was too late. It was my parents’ first and last encounter with excitement-induced pee.

There are some moments that change your perspective on life. That was one of those moments. From that instant onwards, sore legs, tears, punching, dancing and freezing were a walk in the park. It was also the last time my mother went anywhere without packing a spare set of pants in her handbag.

Decades later, when Shawn was in his mid-twenties, he accepted a job working for Disney Cruises in Florida. Though he was understandably excited about starting work on his dream job, my parents dropped Shawn off at the International Airport without incident. Not even a single excitement-induced tear.

Shawn was now an adult, no longer the spirited boy who got so excited about life that it would spill out of him in a salty, liquid-y mess.  Such was his sensibility as a perfectly tempered grown man, that it was nearly impossible to tell if he got excited at all, anymore. Just when my parents thought they had lost their little boy to sensible adult mediocrity forever, they received this email message from him: “I met Donald today, and finally got to shake his hand. Though it was a close call, no spare pants were needed.”