Oct 2, 2015 3 min read

I was at a party the other night, and I deftly pulled off a maneuver I always wanted to try.

I mastered the Irish Goodbye. If you’re not familiar, the Irish Goodbye is when you leave a party without announcing your exit.

You can call it ghosting, the French Exit or just leaving unannounced, but I’m Irish and I’m going with it. I’m calling it the “Erin Go Bye.”

For a long time, I’ve been using the Italian Goodbye. That’s when you hug, kiss and shake hands with everyone as you leave. Somehow you end up circling back to where you started and someone says, “I thought you left 20 minutes ago?”

I’m Irish and Italian, and I can get away with stereotyping my peeps.

I’m a “So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, goodbye, I leave and heave a sigh and say goodbye” kind of person.

One night, I said goodbye so many times that everyone left before me.

There’s a definite exit strategy to a party.

You want to get there late enough that it’s all revved up, and bug out before it’s time to clean up. I have found myself in the kitchen washing dishes at the tail end of many parties.

I decided to call this the Amish goodbye; you just can’t leave when there’s work to be done. If they’re willing to raise barns for each other, I’m pretty sure they wash a few dishes before going home. I can pretty much guarantee they’re not loading or unloading the dishwasher.

After years of my patterned behavior, it was hard to just disappear, but I found the Irish Goodbye works nicely. Unless you’re the host.

It may be too early to tell. I have only used the maneuver once, but I’m very pleased with it. There was a certain satisfaction. In the past, I’ve announced my departure, only to have someone give me a halfhearted wave and nod. I always prefer a grander gesture like, “You can’t leave! We were just about to play Parcheesi!”

By the way, another good reason to take flight is when a lame game comes out. Don’t hate me, but I despise Monopoly. It never ends. I only like to play games that have timers, because then you know you’re finished at some point. In my version of hell, the devil is going to sit me down in front of a game of Yahtzee or force me to play Sudoku. I don’t play games with numbers.

But I digress, like I do. The other night, I had to leave a party to go to another event. I have a problem with double-booking. I forget to consult my calendar when people ask me to go to parties. So, I had to ghost to get from one fun thing to the next fun thing. I have a problem saying “no.” I’m calling that Ado Annie Syndrome (one theater geek laughed at that, but it was worth it).

Technically, I left the second event to go to a third event and got home very, very late. Anyway, I enjoyed bugging out without saying goodbye, even though there’s a bit of guilt attached. Someone had to do the dishes without me.

Catch you later.