Can I Consider This a Side Effect?

Here's a question: What do the following movies, television shows and commercials have in common? Cinderella, The DUFF, The Martian, The Rookie, The clip of Simone Manuel winning her silver medal, the Fitbit Father's Day commercial with the dad and his paralyzed son, and about a hundred other things I can't remember at the moment.

Pathetically, they all made me cry. Not like sobs or anything, but in the last few months I've noticed that, more and more, watching TV leaves me with tears running down my face.

Now, the odd thing is that it's not the sad bits that make me cry. Tsunami washes away the village? Yeah, yeah, whatever. Assassin kills a few people? Well, that's what assassins do.

But now a happy ending? That's a completely different story. NASA saves the astronaut stuck on Mars? Tears. The completely uncoordinated kid makes the Olympic team? Tears. The "ugly" girl gets her boy in the stupid teenage sex comedy?* Tears. 

It's getting really annoying.

More important, I'm trying to figure out why. As anyone will tell you, I'm a robot. I do not do sentimental. So having sentimentality become a side effect of my cancer is driving me a little crazy.

I've come up with three theories for why it's happening. 

Theory 1 - Jealousy

Given that I'm headed for an early grave, it's certainly possible that I'm just jealous of these mostly imaginary characters finding their happy endings. I can't dismiss it out of hand, but I'm not sure it feels right either.

Theory 2 -- Something biochemical

What the hell do I know? Given all the drugs I've taken, and continue to take, it's certainly possible something has changed with my brain chemistry. 

Theory 3 -- Cancer sucks so bad, it makes all the good stuff -- even fake good stuff -- look that much better

I've seen enough now that I think I can say with confidence and reason, for the most part life sucks. Yeah, there are the good bits, but those are actually few and far between and the bulk of the time is spent with crap like getting a terminal disease or unexpectedly losing your job or your spouse leaving you or something terrible happening to your kids or or or or. Once you become aware of this, it's a little hard not to be affected by the idea that some girl can get her ultimate happy ending by virtue of the fact that her foot fits a shoe. More people should get their brass ring solely because the shoe fits. 

All good theories, but I'm still working on which bears the most explanatory power. 

Complicating things, I need to expand a bit on that Fitbit commercial. While I will concede that shedding tears over The DUFF is, in fact, fairly idiotic, I will happily own my reaction to the dude in the Fitbit commercial. Given the, ah, vast range of paternal experiences kids can get, the fact that for thirty years this Dad has pushed, pulled and partnered with his immobile son in marathons and triathalons -- because racing makes him feel like "his disability has disappeared" -- is just bloody amazing. It doesn't matter what else this Dad ever does, the world is a better place simply because he's in it. And the son is pretty amazing, too.

The two of them deserve some tears. 


* We're of course talking Hollywood, so calling the girl in this movie ugly is a little like calling Jeff Bezos "poor" because Bill Gates has $40 billion more than he does.