A recent research study investigating the phenomenon of crying found that on average, at least with that particular group of people, men cried 17 times a year and women a massive 64. That would mean that a woman would be expected to cry once about every 6 days or for just over two whole months. Even the figure for men means that they cry either once or twice every month. Now, these are just average figures. That means that, in reality, some people will cry less often and others more. And that’s the worrying thing. Crying once every 6 days seems extreme - but there must have been women who cried more than that. Even taking into account the potential for traumatic episodes, that’s a lot of crying. (One would assume that crying due to external influences such as cutting onions, choking or being winded would be discounted.)

Sure, life is a bitch a lot of the time but seriously, crying that often can’t be normal. I mean, what could even cause people to cry once a week? Maybe the researchers were unlucky enough to come across a group of people with a fondness for watching weepies every Friday night. Maybe they chose a particularly unlucky sample, who all happened to suffer from personal traumas. Or maybe there’s a more sinister explanation.

I think these so-called scientists weren’t interested in serious research - after all, who would be sad enough to study tears? What they really wanted to do was to take out their frustrations over a lack of a sex life and see how many women they could make cry. Of course, they couldn’t do it directly, otherwise that would invalidate their research - plus these research types are a lot more tricky than that. Perhaps a participant’s cat would be “accidently” run over or their new boyfriend “mysteriously” disappears or a close relation just happened to down their sleeping pills with a bottle of whiskey or their air conditioners were laced with tear gas. And any bets there was a prize for whoever could get the best results out of their randomly chosen “subjects”. That’s the only reason I can think of to explain such unrealistic results.

If there’s a lesson to be learnt here, it’s that scientists can’t be trusted and if you’re ever invited to participate in a research study, the best thing you can do is move house and assume a new identity - otherwise you’ll never know what they might do to get their “results”.