Seventeen Hankies

At the risk of alienating Vortex readers who are not Losties, I wouldn't be navigating true north here without acknowledging the cathartic, fetal-position goodness that came full circle with this week's series finale. Yes, it is bizarre to count used tissues, but the couch cushion next to me held such an absurd pile, I had to quantify it. Then I decided making my own hankie scale would be more fun than a tornado in a trailer park. We'll start small:

No hankies

This is Snoopy Come Home and The Wonder Years goodness where you feel like a hairball is crowding your throat. You can't look away from the screen because the merciless teasing you would endure from your couch mates would know no bounds.

One hankie

Little House on the Prairie comes to mind here. That damned Michael London really knew how to squeeze maximum emotion out of those pioneer family crises, but there's only so much catharsis when you can't relate to a Walnut-Grove-sized drought.

Two hankies

This is Army Wives for me. Yeah, sometimes because of the inevitable good-bye moments, but mostly because watching Drew Fuller makes me weep for the sagging middle in my work-in-progress. And his Keanu Reeves-style acting ability is atrocious; but, hey, a girl has to get inspiration from somewhere, right?

Three hankies

We're at Somewhere in Time-level here. My love-fest for this film stems not only from the birth of my time travel preoccupation, but for its ability to consistently draw tears after I've watched it more times than any other movie ever made. Ditto for the soundtrack.

Five hankies

Definitely Bridges of Madison County cry-fest here. The movie-not the book. The scene where Meryl Streep has her hand poised on the truck's door handle and she's watching Robert Kincaid's taillights had the internal waterworks rivaling the frog-strangling rain on screen.

Ten hankies

Titanic. I watched this in a small town theater in middle-of-nowhere Kansas. This might have been an eight for me, but listening to barrel-chested John Deere plowmen lose it around me ratchets up my sobbing. I'm sure more than one farmer got his man card revoked after that night.

So you see, that's why LOST's finale was so impressive. It was akin to saying long lost-hellos and final goodbyes to everyone a family reunion except bidding Sawyer adieu proved far more difficult than leaving crazy Aunt Edna who eats salad with her fingers and thinks all women who read romance novels are spineless idiots. I wept for the sheer WTH-ery the writers dished out that will keep people debating a decade from now and for the time-travel awesomeness it brought to millions each week. And, for the extra hours in my life I'll now have to lay out my own hankie-worthy story on the page.

Lastly, a huge hug to Marilyn for sending this Lost re-enactment tribute by cats. I hope my Jon gift is enough thanks.

Your turn. Inject your hankie-worthy screen or book experiences into the scale. Let us know where they rank for you. Oh, and gentlemen, we promise not to revoke your man card if you say anything but Old Yeller, which I'm told is a guy freebie from fourth grade.