How about these?:

• I just found out Swans can be gay

• I just saw something happy, which made me sad because I don't have that

• I saw the color purple

hey stranger unrelated fun fact you might enjoy: did you know swans can be gay?

Wow, you're bringing back very specific memories from my childhood. I hope you've managed to heal somewhat and found things that make you happy.

I worked in the food service industry for 5 years, yes they absolutely do.

We had to call the police on people multiple times in those years for things as simple as "1 too many pickles on burger" because the dude got 4 pickles when he asked for 3.

Every single day, multiple times a day, people came in and lost their shit because they were hungry.

yes

There are definitely people who can't handle it. It makes sense in a way; pretty much everybody will lose it once they start starving, so there's definitely a line. Some people just have that line much closer. It seems like a physical tolerance, not really a psychological or character trait.

My spouse is like that and can't go more than 6 hours or so without food. I'm the opposite and can easily go more than a day without before getting cranky, but I assume that's from a lot of practice as a kid.

Rule of HALT - never argue / discuss when you are hungry, angry, lonely or tired. All of these feelings make people unreasonable and they lash out.

Especially people with an unhealthy relationship to food.

For most of my life whenever I felt shitty for a few days but hadn’t cried yet, I’d put on a sad movie and just bawl during the whole thing. Felt much better after a good cry and a good sleep.

I think they're implying that legitimate things are immediate, sad, and personal. But I think all of these options are legitimate reasons to cry.

What's an illegitimate reason? To manipulate someone

So, I did a bit of digging into this to find a reasonable explanation for this one. I've gone through dozens blog posts, research papers, and skimmed through two webinars on the topic. Turns out, this is actually a pretty contentious subject in the sociology field, and there's a lot of competing explanations for this phenomenon. I reached out to an old colleague of mine, Prof. I.M. Bawling, author of Why Am I Crying? Tears, Wails, and Bellyaching Explained, and he was absolutely stumped. After a heated debate that ultimately resulted in the destruction of our lifelong friendship and revoking my invitation to Christmas dinner, the conclusion we've come to is:

It's a joke.