February 14, 2019 in Dag

I’m becoming sentimental in my old(ish) age

I used to be a tough young bugger. Nothing much would get to me. I could watch the most emotional and dramatic movie and not bat an eyelid. Even the most weepy scenes would leave me impassive. Not a tear would drop from my eye. Nothing much would move me.

I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the past or reminiscing about things I used to like or people I used to hang out with.

Sure, I enjoyed a laugh. I made a point of not taking things too seriously. If I went to the movies, my first choice would always be a comedy. None of this dramatic or (even worse) romantic kind of stuff. That wasn’t for me at all. And what did I want to write? Well, it had to be funny, didn’t it. I couldn’t write serious if you paid me. Then again, in most aspects of life, I couldn’t do serious if you paid me.

Okay, so maybe I was young. Maybe I hadn’t lived enough. Maybe I just hadn’t seen enough of the world. For whatever reason, it didn’t bug me too much.

But we don’t stay young for long.

Now the years have passed. I’ve reached what I suppose you’d call respectable middle age. And as the years have washed over me, I suppose I couldn’t help but change, in ways I might not have expected. I’m very different from that coarse young fellow.

With every year that passes, I feel that I’m becoming a real old softy.

These days, it takes very little to bring a tear to my eye. And not only do I not mind. I actually seek it out. When I watch telly or movies, I’d rather watch some sort of mushy, dramatic weepy. As for comedy, I really can’t be bothered anymore. I don’t find myself laughing much and I don’t really care. I’d much rather be crying.

And it’s not just in the things I like to watch. Nowadays, I often find myself reminiscing about the past. About things I’ve done or places I’ve been to. I’ve even made an effort to get back in touch with long lost friends and acquaintances. I have, dare I say it, become sentimental.

This change has been reflected in my writing as well. When I started out, I definitely called myself a comedy writer. I was primarily in it for the laughs. But the more I wrote (coupled with the more I got older), I began to care less about the comic effect and more about the drama.

I wouldn’t say I’ve abandoned humour entirely, but I would say it’s a different sort of humour. Maybe softer, a bit more – what was that word again – sentimental.

Because that’s the sort of guy I’ve become. I know that, to a lot of people, sentimental is a dirty word. It speaks to something soft or cloying. I’m not fussed in the slightest. I’m happy to out myself as a sentimental bloke. Now I’m off to find something else I can cry along to.

 

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Beryl Rule March 10, 2019 at 3:53 am

This warms my heart, Jonathan. People who despise sentiment are lacking a necessary something. At the end of ‘Stan and Ollie’, recently, I was caught when the lights came on in the cinema with slow tears still trickling down my cheeks. What a gem of a film! Wendy, who was with me, tactfully sent me off to the Ladies’ to sponge away the tear marks before we went to dinner.

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Jonathan Gould March 10, 2019 at 4:58 am

Hi Beryl. Thanks for the comment. I’m so sentimental, I’d probably start bawling before it even started.

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