Oh god, oh god, oh god! Fuck you, Gmail, for making this ad, in which a tech-savvy dad uses all of Google’s web services to create a portrait of his adorable daughter starting the day she’s born, with the idea that one day he’ll share with her all the e-mails he’s written her, YouTube videos he’s made, and Google Buzz updates she probably would have ignored. It’s brought me—nearly!—to tears, because I, too, opened a Gmail account for my kid the day she was born. Well, also because I’m a wuss.

Also, a big fuck you to New York Magazine for bringing this whole thing to my attention, including this takedown by TiPb, which points out that this is just the Googleplex’s manipulative way of getting mush-minded parents like me to donate all of their children’s personal information to the Cloud so that Sergei Brin can sell it to advertisers. Screw you all! I’m gonna watch this again and (almost) cry.

Stan (Henry G. Sanders) looks like he's about to cry.

Usually, when I write these “What Almost Made Me Cry Today” episodes, they revolve around some movie I’ve just watched on an airplane. Well, today’s is no different—except that the movie was quite unusual. Most airplane movies are of the recent-blockbuster type. Or, if the plane has a complicated entertainment system, there’s some inoffensive classic like “The Wizard of Oz” or “Caligula” “Big.”

Well, on my Air Canada flight home from Montreal last night, the “Classics” section of the entertainment system included a big surprise: “Killer of Sheep.”

Unless you’re a film d00d, you’ve probably never heard of it. But the 1977 movie, directed by Charles Burnett, is amazing. Shot in black and white in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, it loosely tells the story of a family led by Stan, whose long hours of work at a slaughterhouse have left him exhausted, insomniac and anhedonic. For about 88 minutes, we see his kids play in the dust of vacant lots, and we watch Stan try to buy an engine for the shell of a car he plans to fix up. It’s thoroughly depressing, especially one scene in which Stan dances with his wife and then, when she kisses him, he pushes her away. Totally heartbreaking.

But the part that almost made me cry comes a few minutes later, when Stan’s daughter, who’s maybe 6, comes to play with him. He’s bouncing her on his knee and, for the first time in the whole movie, starting to smile. From the other room, his wife watches, nearly bursting into tears, happy her husband can take joy in something but miserable she can’t bring him that joy herself. Oh man.

I probably would’ve cried right there, but I was distracted. At just that moment, the plane was flying down the length of the island of Manhattan, and at 8pm the city was completely lit up. Is there any more beautiful sight than that, electrified New York on a clear night? As we circled around the city and back toward LaGuardia, I could even pinpoint my house in Brooklyn and imagine my wife and kid inside. No need to almost-cry anymore.

Late last week, some local newspaper asked an important question: “Big Boys Don’t Cry, Do They?” The idea being that John “Waterworks” Boehner’s ascent in Congress signals a new tolerance of adults tearing up under the pressure of strong emotions. Or, well, sort of. The story doesn’t exactly get into the social acceptability of public crying, although the blubberers quoted in the piece want it that way:

“Like many American boys and men, I was taught big boys don’t cry,” [Dan Rather] said, but our ancestors knew better. “In ancient Greek culture, men were allowed their emotions,” he said. In works like “The Odyssey,” “it was very common for men to show their emotions — it was considered even part of the heroic character and personality.”

Here at Dadwagon, we (or maybe it’s just me) have very specific feelings about whether Men should cry. That is, we/I think Men shouldn’t cry. Instead, they should almost-cry.

Why is almost-crying superior to actually-crying? I suppose I feel like there’s something positive about admitting to strong emotions while also being able to control, or at least manage, them. When I write these “What Almost Made Me Cry Today” pieces, I’m talking about moments that really did nearly produce tears, and in most cases I didn’t have to hold back the tears—they just never came, whether because the emotion wasn’t quite strong enough or because I’ve got some in-built block to the tears. Either way, I like it. I get to be sensitive and (a rarity for me) traditionally masculine at the same time. You should try it, Speaker Boehner.

When Jean and I finally gave in and decided to throw a party for Sasha’s second birthday, I was expecting doom. Disaster. An armageddon of tears, bonked heads, cupcake-frosting stains, and parents so offended we’d have to change schools.

Luckily, things went okay. We rolled up the carpets in the living room, bought a bunch of drinks and snacks (some suitable for kids, others for grown-ups), and fired up the “Children’s” playlist on my iPod. Five kids came over, along with most of their parents, and while some were shy and others were in their own world, they generally got along.

But at one point, something unusual happened. Katerina—Sasha’s classmate and best friend—took Sasha’s toy stroller and started racing around the house, circling through the kitchen and living room, followed close behind by Sasha herself. The kids were… playing together! Amusing each other! It was shocking, exciting, enthralling, and terribly, terribly cute, especially when they spotted me with a camera, paused in their face to smile at the lens, and shouted “Cheese!” The parallel-play era, in which kids do the same things next to each other but rarely interact except to gain the notice of their parents or teachers, was showing cracks, hinting at a day, perhaps not far off in the future, when we won’t have to supervise their every move.

Eventually, our downstairs neighbor, Earle, joined in the circular race (he’s 2, in case you’re wondering), and we adults just stood back and watched in wonder as our babies grew up before our eyes. Sniff, sniff.

[In case you’re wondering, no, Dadwagon has not been hijacked by sensitive people. We’ll soon return to our foul-mouthed cynicism, so don’t worry. Just bear with us for a few more moments while the holidays work their mawkish magic.]