The worst is when you have to say goodbye to each individual person there before you leave. This is proper etiquette in my family. You can't just wave goodbye to everyone and walk out the door. You have to hug and cheek kiss each person. I fucking hate it.
Yeah not to mention you have to say good bye twice in my family.
The first time is when your mom says your leaving. And the second is when you're actually walking out of the door about half an hour later when your mom is finished talking.
Yeah that happened on Grad night.
I had two hours before the busses left for Knott's Berry Farm and we spent 5 minutes getting to a Jack's 30 minutes eating and 45 minutes leaving. That damn place.
Oh boy yeah. I don't even say good bye to anyone until she's at the front door.
She'll come around every half hour to let me know we're going to be leaving at X time and I'm just like "yeah cool, mom. Ill say bye when were leaving"
Only twice? Amateurs. My parents are friends with a couple who, when they leave a party, will stand in the doorway "saying goodbye" for an average of an hour and a half.
Are you me? This just brought me back to 10 year old me every time we left our cousins' house. They're a large family. And they lived LITERALLY 2 houses down from us. Why do we have to say goodbye for 30 minutes when we know we'll see each other again probably tomorrow night for dinner??
"Because its rude otherwise mijo! They're going to think I didnt raise you right"
Or dumb shit like that. I was next door neighbors with my aunt and we would still do the long goodbyes. Even though I would use the ladder to hop the fence and just play in their back yard every day anyway.
Its always fun making the rounds in a small living room with far too many people in it and bumping into everything and everyone. Just so you can get to the older people. Because if you don't say good bye to them they'll never let your parents live it down.
In my family we call it a Midwest Goodbye. You start by saying you have to leave, one or two people get up, start to walk towards the exit, but then stop to talk to more people. you then have a conversation at the door, outside the door, by the car, once more time as people pile in, and then you finally get to leave.
It takes a bloody hour. My significant other's family does this and I have to go 'ok when do I really want to be out the door. Ok we have to start saying good by about 45 minutes before that...'
This is really funny for me because I'm the type to just say "Welp, laters!" and leave, but my girlfriend is the exact opposite because of upbringing and personality. It usually leads to me standing waiting for several minutes looking like a jackass while everyone appreciates her sociability. Then when she's done I sling another "OK, byyyeeee" for good measure.
My family insists on this also and it drives me insane, I've started just saying personal goodbyes to my grandpa and mom and waving goodbye at the rest, if anyone wants to beat me to the door and get a hug, so be it.
This is exponentially more painful when there's 3 people you haven't spoken to the entire time. Now you have to do the weird awkward hello-goodbye conversation while being careful to avoid the big elephant in the room.
I go in for a hug
"OMG I didn't know you were here! I wish I had seen you sweetie!"
"Well goodbye!"
"Oh gosh yes. I hope to see you again soon" We actually hug
"Don't be a stranger. When do you think you'll be visiting next?"
There for another 30 mins because of everyone I have to have this conversation with....
Reminds me of when i was a kid and i had to do the same or that would be taken as a non respectful act. However i kept doing it even if everybody (incl my parents ) would start yelling and stuff till i proved my method and nobody can tell me anything now.
cause i can confirm this cause thats the type of shit i need to do to at parties and thats why i stop going to these family parties or staying for them at my house when my parents hosted them as i got in my 20's or so
This is the way it is with my in-laws. Our exit at the end of our wedding took a lot longer than I wanted. It wasn't okay with them for us to wave at everyone and leave.
22 years with my Jewish family and I now refer to this as the Jewish Goodbye. It takes my mom and dad at least 20 minutes to leave any family function or party with close friends.
I just yell bye into a room. No one can say I didn't say bye that way. And real goodbyes only to people on my way out bc it is too weird to walk bye and ignore them.
Same as my family! Ill hug/kiss the host and my grandparents. Everyone else gets a big ol wave and "bye everybody". I am naturally quiet so most people don't hear me anyways.
I am very glad you said something about this. Having a large family (10 aunts and uncles and 30 cousins) it can take forever to finally leave it is so annoying.
Yes. And if you're the first one to leave, people are all "What?! Already!?" and then the minute after that first person leaves, it becomes like a race for the rest of us to not be the last ones there.
I think it just depends on whether or not you grew up around it. I grew up late in the previous generation of my family, so everyone was more or less dead by the time I could do cool things.
Going to a big family gathering at a gf's or friend's house was amazing.
Me too! My wife and her siblings have a competition on who is going to be the last to leave family gatherings. Guess they are trying to convince the parents they have the most love. Makes me ill. I frickin hate her family gatherings.
Oh my god leaving the in laws place takes a full hour. I've learned that if I want to be in bed by 11pm we have to head towards the door at about 8:30pm
My wife's family is like this. I refuse to play the game. I make fun of them about it even. So now I wave byyyyyyyyyyyy and just leave and if they do the everyone says good bye thing I just say bye Ian bye bye bye bye hey Ian byeeeee bye bye bye Ian have a good one bye Ian is my wife's cousin, and he's in on it and just says bye jayboosh every time I say bye Ian. Fuck people like this. A wave covers everyone.
Christ, this is the reason why I get anxiety whenever I go to my in-laws house. I grew up in a non-touchy-feely household. Basically just blurt out the word "bye" as you're walking out the door. But now I've married into exactly what you describe. I have to walk around hugging and kissing all the females on the cheek and shaking all the guys hands. Just let me leave for fucks sake.
Yeah, this traumatized me in my overly-literal youth.
I'd be at some social event just counting the seconds until we could leave. And then it would be time to leave!
...but leaving took forever. First you have to say goodbye to everyone near where you're sitting, and then you have to go find everyone else and say goodbye, and then you have to have the goodbye conversation by the door, and then the goodbye conversation at the car...
I went to parties back in the day hosted by eses. When you arrive you have to give everyone the crazy multi-step handshake. When you leave you have to do the same. It was a workout.
Particularly if you have a French family. Two, or sometimes four, cheek kisses to each person for hello and again for goodbye. A wave will not suffice.
Did I travel back in time and write this? No, that's stupid, I'd remember it. Anyway, future me, what you will eventually learn is that if you wait and extra 5-10 minutes, your kid will get cranky and you can use that as an excuse to just pick him up and announce from right in front of the front door, "Ampersand is really tired and cranky, we're going. Happy whatever!" Works every time.
Same. Dad was one of 12. 28 first cousins on that side and now a bunch of those cousins have kids. I used to get anxiety from it especially when I was real young.
I hate the goodbyes that take an hour, because you say you're going to leave and then the conversation continues. If I say goodbye, it's because I'm, you know, leaving.
Yeah and then have my whole family get on my case about how rude I am and never let me live it down. Do you know how big of an insult it is to Eastern Europeans to do such a thing?
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u/[deleted] Jul 13 '15
The worst is when you have to say goodbye to each individual person there before you leave. This is proper etiquette in my family. You can't just wave goodbye to everyone and walk out the door. You have to hug and cheek kiss each person. I fucking hate it.