I said goodbye to an American family at eight o'clock. I left at 9:40. Nothing went wrong. Nobody stopped me. I stood up, I said thank you, and then a ritual began, and I did not know it was a ritual until I was already inside it. The first goodbye happens sitting down. This one is false. You say "well" and then you do not move. I moved. That was my first error. The second goodbye happens standing. There is new conversation here. Better conversation. The finest stories of the entire evening are told after everyone has agreed to leave. They save their best material for the retreat. This is a nation that fights hardest on the way out the door. The third goodbye happens at the door. The door is open. Cold air is entering the house and nobody acknowledges the cold air. A woman named Deb told me about her sister's kitchen for eleven minutes with a screen door tapping against her shoulder the entire time. Then the porch. Then the driveway. At the driveway the husband got involved. He had barely spoken at dinner. In the driveway he became a different man entirely and told me about a tree. I don't remember anything about the tree. I remember that he was happy. Then leftovers arrived. At the car. Which means someone went back inside and made a plate while I stood in the dark, and nobody asked that person to do it. Nobody ordered that. The supply train left on its own. I got in the car. I believed I had won. My window was down because it was warm out. That was my final error. Deb remembered one more thing. Here is what I have learned since. You do not say goodbye. You say "I should get going," which starts a clock nobody looks at. Then, some time later, the host says "well, I'll let you go." That is the permission. Only the host can grant it. I had been trying to leave without it, like a man walking out of a castle without being dismissed. I now announce that I should get going one hour before I intend to get going. An American friend confirmed this is correct procedure. He also told me his grandmother once said "I'll let you go" and then talked for twenty more minutes, and he wanted me to understand that this is not a failure of the system. That is the system.