According to some dudes, the function of crying is "to send a signal." This is something I arrived at myself in the unpublished short story "Milton Hasbro Tries & Tries" (2003), excerpted below:
Somebody's baby was crying on the crosstown bus, and a little boy wanted to know why. "Babies cry for a lot of different reasons," the little boy's mother said. "Maybe he's hungry, maybe he's tired, maybe he needs his diaper changed. Maybe he just feels like crying."
The common link, Milton thought, listening, was that the baby needed some sort of attention in each case. Crying was crying for help. That's why we cry even now when we're older, he told himself; on some irrational level we're begging to be rescued. It's a surrender. Somebody—anybody—I need help. Take over!
And why do we cry when the pain is lifted? One day on the phone Milton cried when she told him she loved him. He cried silently, but the tears poured down the sides of his face. He was lying on his couch, holding the phone and just crying and crying. Why? She'd told him she loved him: a good thing, a happy thing. "I love you," she said, "so much." So much! And still he cried. Why?
A counterexample?
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