I stepped out with her, and looked back and forth between her and the closing elevator doors.  “Do you know that woman?” I asked.

“What woman?”  Seriously.  She really had no idea who I was talking about, and that was the moment I began to suspect something was amiss (read as “began to think she was nuts.”)

“‘What woman?’  Her!”  I jerked my thumb at the closed elevator doors.  She looked at me blankly as though she was beginning to suspect something was amiss with me.  “The woman you just said ‘Goodbye” to!”  I confess that at this point I was feeling a bit…amiss.

“Oh!” she said as she lit up with understanding.  “No.” 

And with that she turned and went along on her business.  No sociological explanation followed – a bit of me raising my voice, and her laughing at me; but no clear explanation.  I had to piece it together on my own over time, and now you can benefit from my experience.

I have seen my lovely wife walk through a waiting room and bid a fond auf Wiedersehen to a roomful of strangers who happily returned it in chorus to our retreating backs.  She once even said goodbye to a woman in a bakery as we walked past (but not into!) the doorway.  She explained that she had been in earlier, so that made it okay, even friendly, to say goodbye (again, not “Hello,” because that would have been weird.)

After a few years here, I’ve even gotten into the act.  When I pick up some milk at a bakery I say goodbye to the person who helped me.  When I get some money at an enclosed (but never an open air) Bankomat (ATM for my fellow Yanks) I say goodbye to others in the room. When I grab a pizza or a burger out and about I say “Goodbye,” instead of the “Thanks” I’d have said in Cleveland or the grunt and nod I’d have given in NYC. 

Two last cautions on the “Goodbye” front:  First, don’t overdo it.  I used to occasionally give my boss the choral “Goodbye.  Farewell.  Auf Wiedersehen. Good night.  Adieu.  Adieu.  To you and you and you,” from “The Sound of Music.”  I stopped, of course, when I learned that she thought I was mocking her.

Second, know and accept your own personal limitations.  I still can’t bear to do it in elevators.  Let them think I’m rude.

“Goodbye, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, good night!” may be too much.

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