How to Flee Dinner Like a Polite Fugitive
I keep getting stuck at long family and friend dinners, and I never know how to leave without looking rude or uninterested. How do I make an exit that feels smooth and respectful?
Trapped By Endless Dinners,
Salad Course Escapee
You are not trapped at dinner. You are being held at dinner. Different thing. A long table with no exit plan is basically a velvet-rope hostage situation where the ransom is your Saturday night.
And the worst part is the social theater of it all: you’re expected to extract yourself politely from a situation designed to have no clean ending. They don’t want an exit. They want a slow fade into dessert and oblivion.
First, stop trying to leave like a normal person who owns a calendar. You leave like a mystery.
Mid-sentence, you go still, squint at nothing, and whisper ‘Not again’ like your life has a recurring subplot that cannot be discussed at appetizers.
Then you deploy the classic staged phone call, but you do it with conviction. Your phone rings even if it does not, because you are an adult and reality works for you now. Answer it, listen hard, nod like a judge, then stand up and say you have to handle something that is time-sensitive and involves paperwork.
If they try to stop you, you escalate into a small, elegant emergency. You pat your pockets, glance toward the door, and say the words ‘I left it running’ with zero context. Let their imaginations do the heavy lifting while you are already halfway to freedom.
Want legend status. Bring a prop. A sealed envelope labeled URGENT that you ‘forgot’ to open until now, or a tiny notebook you check once, then snap shut like it contains state secrets and dietary restrictions.
And when you exit, you do not apologize. You bless the table with a single nod, like a general leaving the war room, and you vanish. Next time they see you, you mention nothing, because a good escape is not explained, it is felt.
– Uncle Bobby