See You Later, Alligator... or not.

Just had my last day of TAFE and I can't help but feel sad about it. There may be some people I saw today that I may never see again, and it's like, a part of me wants to make some epic goodbye to these people I've known for a year, for some of them more, but my relationship with most of them isn't really sufficient enough for anything more than a regular "goodbye" to be appropriate, maybe a wave or a handshake at most. And I leave with a feeling that I haven't expressed myself to these people who have shared a stage or part of a stage of my life with me. Maybe I've gotten too attached to these people, many of whom are merely friendly aquaintances at best.

Truth is, many of them I will see again. Tomorrow, in fact, with the Awards Night. And who knows? Maybe I'll bump into them every now and then, but I can't really guarantee which ones I will see again and which ones I won't. Also, facebook makes it almost seem like goodbyes aren't as significant anymore because I might still be able to follow them on facebook and keep tabs on them, which is a bit of a double-sided coin. On one hand, it means that goodbye doesn't necessarily mean so long, but on the other hand, the goodbyes seem almost lessened, less significant, and I like my goodbyes, at least my "I won't see you later" goodbyes to be at least somewhat meaningful.

Speaking of "I won't see you later", that is one of my pet peeves, the term "See you later". Having said that, it's a term I use all the time myself. And I don't really mind it when I know I will see them later. But it's like, end of class, I go up to my teacher to say goodbye. I'm about to say, "I'll see you later" as I usually do at the end of class when suddenly it hits me that although it's possible that sometime in the future we may cross paths, it's not guaranteed and I may not, in fact, see him later. So I say, "Goodbye," instead. And, "And I might not see you later, this is my last year." And I tell him I appreciate his teachingness and all that stuff, and he says thanks and that he appreciates that and blah blah blah and then as I leave, he says, "See you later, Green."

And I'm thinking, NO, JUST SAY GOODBYE! WHAT IF I DON'T SEE YOU LATER? THEN IT MEANS THAT YOU'VE JUST LIED TO ME!!

In any case, I saw him again about two minutes later when I was with my friend who went to re-enroll next year and he was doing the re-enrollments so he hadn't in fact lied to me that time at all. Except that he said, "See you later," again when I left again. Humph.

I've occasionally fancied that on my death bed, my last words would be "See you later."

Anyway, there's the awards night tomorrow night and I'm going to say goodbye to some of the people who aren't necessarily my friends but who I am fond of. Some of the people will be going into the city to this pub afterwards and I'll go with them, so I can spend more time with these people who are only barely my friends before our association is doomed to the shallowness of facebook-following.