I think I was 6 or 7 years old the first time I heard the statement in the first part of this week's column title.

I wanted to go somewhere or do something and my mom told me I couldn't and I started crying. And as soon as the crying started, my mom said it.

She said, "Stop crying Mike. Big boys don't cry." That was obviously a significant moment in my life because I still remember it all these years later.

I also obviously took her statement to heart because, growing up in the era I did, she was right: Big boys DIDN'T cry.

It was seen as a sign of weakness. It was seen as a sign of immaturity. Most importantly, it was seen as a sign of sissified behavior. Big boys took whatever life handed them with a stiff upper lip and the very last option we had was to cry.

Whether it was emotional, psychological, or physical pain we were going through and regardless of how intense the pain was, we simply couldn't cry because crying was for girls.

For decades after my mom told me that for the first time, I went without crying except when people close to me died and, even then, I tried my best to do it in private so no one else would see. But a funny thing happened as I got older and, I think, smarter. The need to bottle up my emotions and my pain became nonsensical to me. Our emotions are ever-present reminders of our humanity and we experience a range of them every day. And society tolerates, even encourages, the expression of practically all of them, except crying.

This is especially true in this part of the country. I often use the metaphor that most people in this area are still "stuck in the '50s" as alluded to in the Ronnie Milsap song. Some people are proud that we are, other's not so proud but that's not really the issue. One of the leading causes of death among young people in their teens and 20s is suicide and one of the leading causes of suicide is the inability to recognize, confront, and deal with the problems facing them because they don't feel like they can be that open and honest with people.

They're afraid people will judge them negatively or question their manhood, or accuse them of being too sensitive so they keep those feelings inside and attempt to deal with them alone. When the feelings become all-consuming, some of them believe their only option is to take their own life.

But recently, I've seen discussions of male crying appear in several national news magazines and well as television shows and the thrust is different than what it was when I was growing up and different than what it continues to be in middle America.

The message today is that crying is a good thing. Crying is an expression of ourselves at our deepest core and, consequently, rather than feeling ashamed about it, we should be proud that we not only have the capability to cry but that we are involved enough in our life and the lives of others that we actually have something to cry about.

I've been a crier for some time now, after I finally realized after decades of stifling that emotion, that it was healthier to let it out than to keep it in. I cry at movies. I cry at television shows. I cry when I hear certain songs and I cry about love. I maybe even ran a couple of women off because I cared so much about them, I would sometimes cry just by being in their presence.

Because they were raised in this part of the country, I suppose they saw it as a sign of weakness too, just like little boys are taught, but it wasn't a sign of weakness at all.

It was an overwhelming sense of the love I felt for them that compelled me to express my emotions in that way. I remember apologizing and I remember them telling me I had nothing to apologize for but I wasn't sure they really meant it.

When I look back on those experiences now, I wonder what compelled me to apologize in the first place. I know I didn't apologize because I felt like I had done anything wrong; I apologized because of what I was afraid THEY would think and the interpretation they might have and I realize now that shouldn't have mattered.

If a person I'm in love with is not tuned in to me enough to know and appreciate how I see and respond to life, then maybe they're the ones that should have been apologizing instead of me.

It seems I cry now more than ever. Not when I'm around people of course. I'm happy and outgoing and kind of loud I suppose and, because of that, most people have no idea that I have tender feelings about things. I suppose I act the way I do because I don't want them to know that I DO have tender feelings about things since a lot of people still perceive that to not be very manly.

I suppose I've finally gotten to a point in my life that what others think or feel about me just doesn't matter as much as it once did, especially since I'm alone.

Or maybe I've just lived long enough to realize that my emotions are my emotions, whatever they are, and that I should express what I feel.

Or maybe I realize that there are many more years behind me than in front of me and that increases my sadness and my melancholy when I hear a song or see a photo or watch a movie that reminds me of happier times.

Regardless of the reason, I still keep a check on my emotions when I'm out in public. But I cry a lot when I'm home alone.