You grew up tough, or at least wishing you were. You were a boy, and you grew into a man. One of the many things that defined you was your gender, and that gender was manly. Testosterone ruled your teens and early twenties, you have a hairy chest, not a great deal of hair left on the top of your head, and you consider yourself an old fashioned, insensitive and brutish American man.
So why is it the Publix commercial wherein a mother and daughter are making grotesque pinwheels causes my eyes to water, why is it the dad who won't let go of his daughter before she goes into surgery makes me desperate to find and hug my own, and why oh why do I suddenly feel the need to go out to the store and CONSUME? I'll tell you why. You're a dad now. Becoming a dad colors all of your perceptions. It is as though someone has taken a pink lighting gel and permanently affixed it to both your glasses and your contact lenses.
Modern media is well aware of these heartstrings and pulls them religiously, almost with a fervor. I just was never affected before, I wasn't immune, but I could handle it. Now I can't. In the same way that I can not look at Clara without smiling, I can't watch a terrible commercial without relating it to my paternal experience. I recognize that the commercial is terrible, I vow to keep it out of my consciousness, and yet I think about these heartstring commercials. Unbidden, they rise into my foremost thoughts, pushing out less important things like networking details, IP addresses, necessary passwords, and/or my own phone number.
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