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Friday, November 18, 2011

THE GOODBYE TOUR

THE GOODBYE TOUR


The Holiday season is upon us and with it comes parties, family, and friends.  I love the company, I love the parties; I hate “The Goodbye Tour.”
The “Goodbye Tour” is the complicated process of trying to say good night or good bye as a party breaks up.  Women are primarily responsible for this tradition.  When it is time to go home your wife needs to say a personal good bye not just to the host, but to everyone at the party.  There is much hugging, kissing and “We must get together soon” discussions. 

Often as the man slowly slinks to the front door and freedom, the wife gets distracted; losses track and she begins a whole new good bye process.  It is like singing a song, forgetting a word and starting from the beginning, she misses a guest and has to go back and do the good bye thing all over from the start.

It turns out that the “Goodbye Tour” is not just a gender thing, it is cultural as well.  Mrs. Cranky is half Irish and half Italian, but her Italian half has most of the relatives.  The Italian “Good Bye Tour” involves more hugging, and a cheek kiss from everyone.  Men are not excluded from the Italian “Good Bye Tour.”
The Italian family get-together also involves the “Hello Processional.”  This is the same as the GBT, except it involves a “How you doin” greeting instead of a “Don’t be a stranger” send-off. 

New Years Day we spend at Mrs. Cranky’s Aunt Catherine’s shore house (see “Sometimes People Are Just Nice”)


Aunt Catherine provides great food and good drink and more Uncles, Aunts and Cousins than I can count.  Between people coming in doing the  “Hello Processional” and those leaving on the GBT, you are constantly standing up, hugging and kissing, sitting down and then standing up again.  It is kind of like being a mole in a four hour “Whack-a-mole” nightmare.
I am a WASP (white Anglo-Saxon protestant), born with a stick up my butt and a stiff upper lip.  I am not used to the Italian family Hello/Goodbye hug and kiss fest.  As one recent party was breaking up and Mrs. Cranky was twenty-five minutes into the GBT, I stood by the door and did the all encompassing good bye wave.  “What the heck is that….where are the hugs” I was asked.  I replied, “This is how WASPS say good bye.”  There was dead silence and some weird unhappy stares for what seemed like forever until someone spoke up and said, “I think he said WASPS.” When you say WASPS to Italians, you need to be sure you pronounce the “S” in Saxon.

In am learning how to deal with the huggy kissy salutations.  It is not part of my culture, but neither are ziti, meatballs and sausage.  I will take the hugs and kisses along with the food and give up the WASP wave and finger-sandwiches anytime!   

9 comments:

  1. Being a full fledged dago {yep I am 100% Italian so I can call myself a dago if I wanna} my hubby who is a not goes through the same shit with me when he is at our family functions it takes forever. We have started doing the good bye tour almost an hour before I actually have to get out the door. This post hit close to home...love

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  2. lol! love this post.

    i'm multiracial, but being as though most of my family members are black, we do the same thing. the goodbye tour is so long, lol! awww, this was a great post!

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  3. I do the huggy thing when I leave parties and get togethers, but I do have the decency to feel embarrassed when it takes too long.....I like to hug 'em and leave 'em, usually so I can get home , get my pj's on and relax!

    I am looking forward to my first US celebration. I get to meet the only one of my soon to be brother-in-laws that I haven't met yet, and this one is the most important one being the one closest to S. He flies in from NY tomorrow actually and is with us for a week - I hope to god we get on or it could be the longest week ever! I also get to meet one of S's 2nd Cousins who is just coming over for the day on Thursday. Her husband is serving in the military so we don't want her being on her own on this important day - she is bringing with her 2 Great Danes!! I am a huge dog lover, but 2 Great Danes has got to be a hand full for anyone - I don't know how she copes!

    Hopefully there will not be too much of the huggy stuff going on apart frm between me and S - which I am cool with!

    Lou :-)

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  4. JH, you always had seconds here when Italian food was on the menu...

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  5. My family is not Italian--and we do the same thing--we're Irish, German, and Polish. Go figure :) (Must be the Irish and German Beer?? Just a guess--usually have both on hand).

    Cheers, Jenn

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  6. I prefer to just duck out at parties. I say a quick goodbye to the host (If I can find him/her) and then I just walk OUT. I don't do the huggy, kissy long good-bye-to-each-person-I-see thing and I guess that is.... rude? I don't know, because whenever I'm at a party and then I realize a certain person is no longer there, I never think to myself, "Wow, she didn't say goodbye.....how rude" or it doesn't hurt my feelings or anything. I just figure it was time for them to leave. No big, you know? So I assume that no one cares if I leave, too. I guess I could be wrong, but you know....even if I found out that I WAS wrong, I still wouldn't change my ways. So please, no one tell me that I'm wrong. Because that would just give me guilt.


    Hello. My name is Katrina, and I'm one of those Ninja leavers where you didn't realize that I left until it dawns on you that I'm no longer there. My husband loves me extra for this.

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  7. In our family this is known as "Hour Baur." I am the "goodbye and get out" kind of person, my husband's family have been known to take an hour to say goodbye when their ultimate destination when they got where they were going was--to the same house. They will block the entrance to a restaurant they have just left to say goodbye and then all drive back to the same house. All of us in-laws HATE it.

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  8. In case it's not apparent, my husband's family are the Baurs.

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  9. Too funny Cranky! Like you, I like a good slink. Quick and quiet. Thanks for Rewinding x

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