Damn you NPR

I was driving to work today and on NPR there was a story that made me cry. It's typical of stories that make me cry, when a person's life is in real danger but someone else who's just doing their job saves their life. En plus, the story was from my hometown of Champaign-Urbana, at the airport that my parents and I fly out of all the time. There's a flight school there and a lot of opportunities for local folks to fly little Cessnas in the clear Midwestern skies. Anyway - this pilot's autopilot decided it would go into a nosedive, and the air traffic controller had to supply the guy with the right readings while the pilot fought against the pull downward. The tower records everything, so you hear the fear and the fatigue in the pilot's voice. You know the story's going to turn out ok and maybe that's what got me - the cognitive dissonance between being in that moment of fear and knowing that there would be a happy ending.

Which prompts another question....what makes humans cry?