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penfield"I hate when things are over
When so much is left undone."
- Deep Blue Something, "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
I am no good at goodbyes.
Thank yous are really my specialty. I have a finely tuned sense of appreciation and the ability to thank people within an inch of actual tears. It is not uncommon for me to thank a person so vigorously that they are forced to give me a thank-you for my thank-you, which of course warrants another thank-you from me, which precipitates a thank-a-thon that can last for up to fifteen minutes.[1] My Thanksgivings would perhaps spill over into the weekend if not for large amounts of tryptophan.
I'm also talented with apologies, which is a good thing because I seem to use them a lot. I also tend to wait a while before saying I'm sorry,[2] either because I am waiting to see if it is absolutely necessary or because I want my apology to have the maximum possible impact. This is problematic, though, because after a certain point the required length of an apology begins to correspond directly with the length of the waiting period. It is a little-known fact that "War and Peace" is actually a very long and complicated apology Tolstoy wrote to his mother for failing to take out the trash.
I'm even pretty good with helloes, though this is largely due to my natural charm more than any particular artistry. I'm generally pretty good about smiling, and my handshake is top-notch (firm grip, dry hand, single squeeze, two-and-a-half pumps). However, I am now entering that phase of adulthood when a kiss-hello for non-family female friends becomes standard practice, just when I was starting to feel really comfortable with my traditional kissing skills.
(Actually, it is not the kiss-hello practice itself that bothers me; it is the constant uncertainty about whether it is proper. I have to remember all the specific people with whom I am on a kiss-hello basis and be careful not to imbue these kisses with too much feeling. Since I am a naturally virile man in my late 20s, every woman quietly assumes that my every action is part of a grand design to get into her pants, and I must be careful not to give the wrong impression. I am much more interested in getting under her blouse first.)
No, wait. What I mean is, I don't want to come on too strong. After all, history has shown that a mere peck on the cheek from enchanted_pants can prove a "gateway kiss" to much harder and more dangerous kisses, occasionally resulting in full-blown affection. I hope these helloes do not get even more complicated as I get older, lest I have to fret about make-out helloes, sensual massage greetings or heavy-petting hey-howya-doin's.
But as nerve-wracking as helloes are, goodbyes are positively perilous. For one thing, they last longer. Helloes last a few seconds, and then you can immediately move on to other topics of conversation (e.g., "why did you just grab my breast?") First impressions, powerful as they are, are at least malleable with increased exposure.
Last impressions, like goodbyes, are not so flexible. They linger, hanging in the air like the smell of a clambake, and you just have to hope that you cooked up something fresh and tasty instead of something nauseous.
Part of my problem with goodbyes is probably psychological. Like most first-born children with a younger sibling whose parents split up then got back together then split up again then got back together again, I may possibly have a very mild fear of abandonment.
And so, when it comes time for people to go away, as they are putting on their shoes and coats and searching for their car keys, I am always trying to figure out ways to delay their exit. I scan my apartment for items to give away, like door prizes. "Would you like any leftovers? Something to read on the train? A massage for the road?" If I ever have children, they will constantly be late to school because they are dragging bookbags full of snacks, magazines and tchotchkes.
Often I will even shout things as people are walking down the hall away from my apartment. Things like "take care" and "drive safely," silly Public Service Announcements that make me feel like I'm channeling my mother. This is not to suggest that I don't really want my friends to "take care" and "drive safely," because I do value their wellbeing. But the more times I say it, the less meaning it has, and soon it will become one of those things that people just say reflexively, like our receptionist saying "thanks," or Austin Powers saying "baby," or my ex-girlfriend saying "Oh, yes, Roger, yes, oh Roger, oooh."[3]
My difficulties extend to the phone, too. Without the benefit of body language, it is sometimes hard for me to tell when a person is irritated, falling asleep, trying to flee, etc. and my farewells will last for several minutes as my tangents unfold into sillier tangents which then unfold into surrealism. Meanwhile, the person on the other end of the line is gnawing on his or her phone cord in an attempt to simulate hardware failure.
When signing off from important calls, like with girls or job interviewers or heads of state, I will find myself afflicted with the other source of my goodbye problem: Cute-itis Nervosa. This phenomenon, on the fringe of recognition by the DSM-IV, occurs when I try to be so cute and clever that I become annoying and/or weird. It can be graphed like so:
And even despite my usual efforts to be unique and memorable, I still tend to close out my phone conversations with some form of "I'll talk to you later." I don't know when this started; perhaps it was in college, when I lived and worked with the same people all the time, and I knew I was definitely going to see them later, possibly in their underwear.
On a psychological level, maybe "I'll talk to you later" is a simple but poignant message to my friends that I will always be there for them, stalwart and true and willing to take their call, unless I am on another call with another friend who needs me at the same time, but I will at least answer the call waiting beep to see who it is and if it is urgent, and if it is not urgent I will remember to call them as soon as I am finished with my prior call, or at a predetermined date and time.
Or conversely, maybe it is some kind of subconscious plea for reassurance that I will talk to you later, that you're not going to leave me and run off with some other blog.
Sometimes my goodbye complex is so paralyzing that I don't even know how to end a journal post. Should I close with a moving story about goodbyes,[4] or some kind of joke?[5] Should I sum up this essay with one of those all-purpose words like "Cheers" or possibly "Aloha?" Should I…
Hey, wait a minute. Where are you going? You have to leave? You're leaving? Well, okay. Thanks for reading. You're sure I can't offer you another non-sequitur or anything? All right then. Take care. Drive safely.
I'll talk to you later.
When so much is left undone."
- Deep Blue Something, "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
I am no good at goodbyes.
Thank yous are really my specialty. I have a finely tuned sense of appreciation and the ability to thank people within an inch of actual tears. It is not uncommon for me to thank a person so vigorously that they are forced to give me a thank-you for my thank-you, which of course warrants another thank-you from me, which precipitates a thank-a-thon that can last for up to fifteen minutes.[1] My Thanksgivings would perhaps spill over into the weekend if not for large amounts of tryptophan.
I'm also talented with apologies, which is a good thing because I seem to use them a lot. I also tend to wait a while before saying I'm sorry,[2] either because I am waiting to see if it is absolutely necessary or because I want my apology to have the maximum possible impact. This is problematic, though, because after a certain point the required length of an apology begins to correspond directly with the length of the waiting period. It is a little-known fact that "War and Peace" is actually a very long and complicated apology Tolstoy wrote to his mother for failing to take out the trash.
I'm even pretty good with helloes, though this is largely due to my natural charm more than any particular artistry. I'm generally pretty good about smiling, and my handshake is top-notch (firm grip, dry hand, single squeeze, two-and-a-half pumps). However, I am now entering that phase of adulthood when a kiss-hello for non-family female friends becomes standard practice, just when I was starting to feel really comfortable with my traditional kissing skills.
(Actually, it is not the kiss-hello practice itself that bothers me; it is the constant uncertainty about whether it is proper. I have to remember all the specific people with whom I am on a kiss-hello basis and be careful not to imbue these kisses with too much feeling. Since I am a naturally virile man in my late 20s, every woman quietly assumes that my every action is part of a grand design to get into her pants, and I must be careful not to give the wrong impression. I am much more interested in getting under her blouse first.)
No, wait. What I mean is, I don't want to come on too strong. After all, history has shown that a mere peck on the cheek from enchanted_pants can prove a "gateway kiss" to much harder and more dangerous kisses, occasionally resulting in full-blown affection. I hope these helloes do not get even more complicated as I get older, lest I have to fret about make-out helloes, sensual massage greetings or heavy-petting hey-howya-doin's.
But as nerve-wracking as helloes are, goodbyes are positively perilous. For one thing, they last longer. Helloes last a few seconds, and then you can immediately move on to other topics of conversation (e.g., "why did you just grab my breast?") First impressions, powerful as they are, are at least malleable with increased exposure.
Last impressions, like goodbyes, are not so flexible. They linger, hanging in the air like the smell of a clambake, and you just have to hope that you cooked up something fresh and tasty instead of something nauseous.
Part of my problem with goodbyes is probably psychological. Like most first-born children with a younger sibling whose parents split up then got back together then split up again then got back together again, I may possibly have a very mild fear of abandonment.
And so, when it comes time for people to go away, as they are putting on their shoes and coats and searching for their car keys, I am always trying to figure out ways to delay their exit. I scan my apartment for items to give away, like door prizes. "Would you like any leftovers? Something to read on the train? A massage for the road?" If I ever have children, they will constantly be late to school because they are dragging bookbags full of snacks, magazines and tchotchkes.
Often I will even shout things as people are walking down the hall away from my apartment. Things like "take care" and "drive safely," silly Public Service Announcements that make me feel like I'm channeling my mother. This is not to suggest that I don't really want my friends to "take care" and "drive safely," because I do value their wellbeing. But the more times I say it, the less meaning it has, and soon it will become one of those things that people just say reflexively, like our receptionist saying "thanks," or Austin Powers saying "baby," or my ex-girlfriend saying "Oh, yes, Roger, yes, oh Roger, oooh."[3]
My difficulties extend to the phone, too. Without the benefit of body language, it is sometimes hard for me to tell when a person is irritated, falling asleep, trying to flee, etc. and my farewells will last for several minutes as my tangents unfold into sillier tangents which then unfold into surrealism. Meanwhile, the person on the other end of the line is gnawing on his or her phone cord in an attempt to simulate hardware failure.
When signing off from important calls, like with girls or job interviewers or heads of state, I will find myself afflicted with the other source of my goodbye problem: Cute-itis Nervosa. This phenomenon, on the fringe of recognition by the DSM-IV, occurs when I try to be so cute and clever that I become annoying and/or weird. It can be graphed like so:
And even despite my usual efforts to be unique and memorable, I still tend to close out my phone conversations with some form of "I'll talk to you later." I don't know when this started; perhaps it was in college, when I lived and worked with the same people all the time, and I knew I was definitely going to see them later, possibly in their underwear.
On a psychological level, maybe "I'll talk to you later" is a simple but poignant message to my friends that I will always be there for them, stalwart and true and willing to take their call, unless I am on another call with another friend who needs me at the same time, but I will at least answer the call waiting beep to see who it is and if it is urgent, and if it is not urgent I will remember to call them as soon as I am finished with my prior call, or at a predetermined date and time.
Or conversely, maybe it is some kind of subconscious plea for reassurance that I will talk to you later, that you're not going to leave me and run off with some other blog.
Sometimes my goodbye complex is so paralyzing that I don't even know how to end a journal post. Should I close with a moving story about goodbyes,[4] or some kind of joke?[5] Should I sum up this essay with one of those all-purpose words like "Cheers" or possibly "Aloha?" Should I…
Hey, wait a minute. Where are you going? You have to leave? You're leaving? Well, okay. Thanks for reading. You're sure I can't offer you another non-sequitur or anything? All right then. Take care. Drive safely.
I'll talk to you later.
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[2]
Date: 2005-01-19 09:00 pm (UTC)BERT: Someone ate all the Cracklin' Oat Bran.
ERNIE: I'm sorry.
BERT: Aha! So it was you!
ERNIE: I'm sorry?
BERT: See? A confession, you rotten piece of shit.
ERNIE: No, I mean I don't understand what you mean.
BERT: You ate all the Cracklin' Oat Bran!
ERNIE: No I didn't. I was just expressing detached sympathy and regret for your loss.
BERT: Oh. I'm sorry.
ERNIE: Me too.
BERT: For what?
ERNIE: I'm not sure.
BERT: Dammit, who drank all the milk?
ERNIE: Oh, that was me.