The crying game.

Music has a powerful effect on me. A single song can instantly transport me to another place and time as well as spontaneously inflate or deflate my mood.

I have an iPod that contains all of my music. I can attach my iPod to our home stereo and pipe its songs to any room in my house.

This weekend I was cooking in the kitchen and jamming away happily (or so I intended) to the Beatles. To my horror, three different songs played that reduced me to tears. I have an entire playlist on my iPod called 'Weepy Songs' comprised of selections that I *know* have this effect on me, but these particular songs are not on that list, though I may have to add them.

The first song was When I'm Sixty-four. I can explain this one easily. At our rehearsal dinner many moons ago, my sister and Robert's identical twin brother sang this tune with words rewritten for Robert and me. It was a poignant and special moment, and now that I'm as close to 64 as I am to the age I was when I married (egad! how did that happen?!), it's understandable that the song should elicit emotion.

The next was Golden Slumbers. I clearly remember listening to this song on my 8-track player as a freshman in college. I had left everyone and everything familiar to go to school half way across the country. As I sang along then and this weekend, "Once there was a way... to get back homeward. Once there was a way... to get back home. Sleep pretty darling, do not cry..." suffice it to say I did not make it past line one before dissolving into sobs.

The third song was Here, There and Everywhere. I have no *history* with this particular piece and no explanation for why this sent me over the edge. There had been enough other tunes like Sgt. Pepper and Ob-la-de, Ob-la-da that I should have recovered well enough by this point, but alas, I choked up again.

I think it was around this time that poor Robert happened by the kitchen and discovered me singing, cooking and crying (multi-tasking anyway!) and wondered what in the heck was wrong with me. Somehow my pitiful explanations made absolutely no sense to him or to me.

Luckily I Feel Fine began to play and saved the day.