I often tear up from scenes from movies and tv. Yet basically never do for anything in real life.
I was listening to an NPR story the other day about how a ton of people showed up to donate blood to save an infant, and only one was a match, but it was anonymous, now the kid is a healthy 20yr old and the mom can’t thank the person who saved them. It had my eyes all mushy on my commute home.
Yet, I had a cousin, and an uncle pass within the last few months and while I was sad, and I miss them, not a tear generated.
The “damn it I forgot, let me google it” option, back then, was looking it up in the set of encyclopedias your family probably had. Or if you didn’t have a set, or needed more elaborate information, you went to the library.
I remember it was a big deal as a kid when we got the encyclopedia Britannica on CD-Rom. So I could just type in what I was looking for instead of having to try to find it manually.