Feel free to call me a wuss

Unbridled soccer ecstasy never fails to make me tear, a little bit. It's a well documented fact that the only time I cried in the 1990s was in 1999 when Manchester United scored two goals in injury time to win the European cup, against Bayern Munchen.

You may think it's strange but it's my very own 'acceptable outlet' and I'm not ashamed by it. Men are trained to control their emotions, to suppress them to a place where light does not penetrate. What this does is it causes them to resurface at seemingly insignificant times. At times when crying doesn't have a stigma.

So, if you have your heart ripped out of your chest by some cold, calculating hussy (just an example), I'll walk away with no emotion. Years later, I could be mowing the lawn and the sight of a dead ladybird on a leaf could cause the flood gates to open. The tears are directly connected to the girl who hurt you...but no one can ever prove that.

Think of men's emotions as a safe. A strongbox with a secret combination. Now think of the events in life as a series of random numbers that float through the air, bombarding you with digits. Now what men do is they need to protect the contents of this safe, at pain of death. So what they do (pay attention, this part is very important) is they don't bother picking a combination. They select a random sequence that even they don't know. The better trained as men they are (or, the more repressed), the more obscure the combination and the harder it is for traditional events (breakups, stress, loneliness) to make them cry.

The other side of the coin is that random things will crack that safe wide open. Like soccer jubilation, for instance. Or the closing number in the movie "Fighting Temptations". Or dead ladybirds on green leaves. Get it?

I've said this before but I can say it again. If you want to get an inkling (and an inkling is all you'll get) into how men think and feel, read Nick Hornsby's "Fever Pitch". We're simple creatures but we've gone to complicated lengths to hide that. We make them complicated so even we can't figure them out.