You’re walking home from school on a windy November day when — whoosh! — a breezy blast smacks you in the face. As your teeth start to chatter and you pull your jacket closed, you notice your eyes are tearing up. Your eyes are tearing, but you’re not sad. What’s going on? Your eyes are “watering.”
Tell Me About Tears
When your eyes water, they’re making tears, just like when you cry. The tears from watering help protect your eyes. How? By keeping them moist and washing out dust and other foreign stuff that gets in there. The tears from watering eyes might only fill your eyes or they might trickle down your face.
Whether you’re crying or your eyes are just tearing, the liquid in your eyes is created the same way. All tears come out of tear glands, or lacrimal (say: LAH-krum-ul) glands, found way up under your upper eyelids. Tears wash down from the glands and over your eyes.
Some of the tears drain out of your eyes through tear ducts, or lacrimal ducts. These ducts are tiny tubes that run between your eyes and your nose. Each tear duct is like a tiny bathtub drain. When the tears fill up your eyes, they drain out through the tear ducts. You have two tear ducts — one near the inside corner of each eye. You can see these holes if you gently pull down your lower eyelid a bit.
If tears are flowing quickly, like when you’re crying pretty hard, the ducts can’t drain them all, so tears run down your face. And have you ever noticed that your nose sometimes runs when you cry? That’s because some of the tears making their exit through the ducts end up coming out of your nose.
