I, too, have a name that can be twisted into not-so-polite anatomical references. Although my skin is not orange, and I don't drink hard liquor, I do cry. I cry when I drive to work. I cry when I hear music. I cry at plays. I cry at movies. I even cry watching TV. Not in loud boo-hoos, but just tearing up. Sometimes I think I'm tearing up at all the injustices I hear about (I work for a public radio news station); sometimes I think I cry in wonder at the beauty of the universe, the "gift of sound and vision," as David Bowie put it. I have a few thoughts below the Danish pastry.
I have a pretty darn sensitive nature. I can feel the pain of others and I work to be kind as possible, aware that we all hurt inside from "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune." I'm slow to anger but I can get mighty angry if pushed beyond a certain limit.
What has this to do with House Speaker John Boehner?
Well, I wonder if he has -- perhaps unconsciously -- a very different person inside of him; a person horrified at the policies his party espouses. Could the cognitive dissonance between the hard-drinkin' tough guy who won't budge to help our first minority President and shouts F-bombs at the Senate Majority Leader and a little boy, who grew up poor, scarred by poverty and scared easily by the world around him. Maybe the tears are not such a mystery. Now, the orange skin, that's another story.