I remember observing some time after the birth of my first daughter that fatherhood had made me more sensitive: more prone to displays of emotion. As someone who had previously been troubled by my inability to fully engage with sentimental matters, I welcomed this development. To a certain extent. I was nevertheless hopeful that, by the time my second daughter came along, I would have found a way to rein in these weepy tendencies. I've got a reputation to uphold, after all.
It seems that I have failed to achieve this. Double the daughters; double the distress. I am struggling to convince myself that this is all simply a consequence of my burgeoning maturity; that I am no longer susceptible to the misguided social consensus that real men don't cry. On the contrary, I can proudly display my transcendence over this notion.
So why is it so embarrassing?
As the duty manager at work the other day, I was presented with a distraught young man of about three or four who had been separated from his parents. His anguish was quite understandable (most of us have a traumatic memory of a similar occurrence in our own youth) so I was unsurprised at the relief I felt when - before I had the chance to take any decisive action - his mum appeared on the far side of the shop, calling desperately to him as he sprinted at her, tears flowing and arms outstretched.
What I wasn't expecting was my reaction after this reunion had taken place. All too suddenly I knew I was about to cry. I was in the middle of a busy shop, of which I was supposed to be in charge, and I was welling up. I genuinely had to take myself away for a minute to compose myself. The more generous among you may find this endearing. Others will now be laughing at me, with some justification. Either way, it was unprofessional at best.
At least I was in a position of less responsibility today when an even more surprising source provoked my tear glands. It was my day off, and mid-afternoon before my wife and I were able to enjoy the sitting privileges granted to us only when both daughters are asleep. We chose to celebrate this by watching a recording made the night before of our favourite misanthropic, improvised sitcom, Curb your Enthusiasm. Larry David is capable of drawing various reactions from people: mirth, disgust, offence, guilty agreement, admiration... But he has never made me cry. Not even when Cheryl left him.
And yet today's scene, in which an entirely inconsequential character is urged to throw her baby from a burning building, to be caught by a former baseball player infamous for dropping catches, had me blubbing once more. The baby's jeopardy was nothing more than the setup for a joke about a baseball player. It was made abundantly clear that it was actually a plastic doll being filmed. But my new ability to collapse emotionally was immune to this fact.
Once I had completed the increasingly familiar task of composing myself, I was reminded of the aforementioned lost boy at work embarrassment. I turned to my wife to confess this tale to her. Only I couldn't get the words out, because guess what the memory of it made me do?
As I write this, there's a programme on TV about some soldiers' wives and girlfriends singing I'll Be There at a concert. I've got that tickle behind the eyeballs.
This has got to stop.
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