I Really Want To Go

I've said what a hard time I have saying goodbye at the end of the evening. This is when everyone's planning on going home, and people are one by one peeling away after saying their goodbyes to friends who are gracious and understanding. These are not people putting up any kind of resistance, and yet separating from them remains a tall order for me. It's just a matter of cutting off a line of conversation before it reaches maturation.

Imagine when the people I'm trying to say goodbye to really don't want me to go and try to stop me. If I were drunk and they were trying to keep me from getting in my car and driving away, they would employ physical force. I would then be grateful, not just for having my life saved, but for not having to suffer the far worse force of ridicule and sarcasm which one must face in order to part ways with friends insistent on continuing the good times.

It's a steep price one must pay in order to get home any time before three in the morning. The alternative is the far worse fate of paying between three and five dollars apiece for beers at bars too loud to talk in and too crowded to dance in, so I naturally prefer to face the gauntlet of withering verbal attacks from friends who like me too much to let me go. They'll question your manliness, express disbelief that you have anything going on the next day- it goes on and on.

I won't deny that I perpetrate this against others myself sometimes. I wish I didn't, partly because that puts me on less firm ground in arguing against it, and partly because I just dislike it so much. I grow somewhat hesitant to start evenings that I am not eager to carry on until it is nearly daylight because of what will come when I make the reasonable decision to go home at midnight. It's a shame my friends like me that much.