Early party exits

One reader's early departure from a party resulted in minor bodily harm. (Photo: behance.net/runamokstudios)

Some situations call for a quick exit. Like the time Laura, a nurse, found herself at a terribly boring party, wanting terribly much to leave.

“My husband is a scientist,” she says. “It was a scientist party. These people are impossible to understand. They bring horrible food. You cannot imagine how horrible these parties are.”

Laura told her husband she’d rather not join him that night, but he thought she needed to make an appearance. “So I told him, ‘If I go, I’d like to leave early. Like the first chance I get.’

“There were people inside and outside of the house,” Laura says. “I had been there maybe 15 or 20 minutes and saw a[n automatic driveway] gate outside and thought I was just going to make a dash for it.” Laura told her husband she was leaving but otherwise played the ninja, going for a quick, quiet exit. “I didn’t want to have to walk back through the house and say goodbye to the hosts or anyone. It would have been embarrassing because I had just gotten there. But I did not want to be there.”

So Laura proceeded to make a stealth exit. Moving quickly, she opted not to seek out a pedestrian passage but instead raced to pry open and squeeze through the automatic car gate. Things didn’t go smoothly. “My body got through, but my head got stuck,” Laura says. “It was awful. I thought I was going to have to holler for somebody to come help me. You know, it felt like I was stuck forever. I yanked on my head a couple of times, and it hurt my ears horribly. But I remember thinking I would rather lose my ears than yell for help at that party.”

When asked why she chose to squeeze through the automatic gate, so obviously not made for humans to squeeze through, she answered, “I’m not sure I thought the plan through in its entirety.”

Would she do it again? “Yes. I just wouldn’t go out of the gate.”

But hold off on your letter to the editor condemning Laura. Consider that there’s actually a good number of party-goers who think it’s just fine to take early leave – or “ghost” – with as little fuss as possible (not exactly Laura’s strong point).

(Laura is not her real name, by the way. We promised not to use anybody’s real names in this story, for obvious reasons.)

Dan, a banker, is all for leaving without saying goodbye. “My wife has difficulty leaving parties, which ends up in a loop of saying goodbye numerous times,” he says. “She has now learned the knack to leave before anyone notices. The more people and the more the wine flows, the easier to pull off.”

I empathize with this man’s wife, who is a realtor and whose business is talking to people. I’ll seek out everyone who played a part in giving a party. As you can imagine, this process is not quick and tends to make me less than popular with anyone who might be exiting with me. I come by it naturally – my mother cannot leave a party quickly (it is beyond possible), and my friends say I have a just a little bit of her in me (usually this would be a compliment but in this case maybe no). Now that I think of it, maybe approaching every host and hostess is a little selfish in itself – I annoy my companions, I interrupt the hosts and it’s entirely possible that they really don’t care when I’m leaving.

So what to do when you’re at a party, wanting desperately to leave, but not wanting to disturb the host in the thick of it – or not wanting to expose an early decampment?

A consult with Emily Post would have us “make sure to say goodbye and thank you to each of your hosts. If they’re not by the door,” she says, “seek them out and thank them personally before you go.”

But it’s not always easy. And is it always appropriate? “Etiquette dictates you should say goodbye to the host, but circumstances don’t always make it possible,” says Jen, a fundraiser for a local nonprofit who recently built a house and has been hosting lots of large parties. “A lot of people don’t tell us goodbye, and I’ve never given it a second thought. Now if somebody came and didn’t talk to me at all, that’s another story.”

As long as you don’t get caught in a gate, you’re probably ahead of the game.