The past week has seen a lot of losses. You might want to find a Kleenex box and scroll to the bottom of the post to refer to my handy list of Top Ten Goodbye Songs before continuing. You could also just pop in a NOW! cd, because most songs I put on the list have been on those compilations .. no surprise there.
1. Goodbye, crappy white Macbook.
After 3.5 years of constant use/abuse, you might think that this computer is totally unusable. That’s sort of true, because it was totally unusable until 2 days ago, when it was given a new hard drive, new battery, and sent to Mexico.
This computer has seen me through the thick and think of my adolescence. When I was in France, it was my connection to Seth Cohen and Summer Roberts in Newport Beach. It was also my connection to people I actually knew/ college acceptance emails/lots of music, but most importantly it endured hours upon hours of Californiaaa Here We Coooome.
At Carleton, this computer saw me through my linguistics all-nighter, my Latin American Poetry all-nighter, my Arrested Development all-nighter, my English all-nighters, and my many many many studio art all-nighters. The night I was supposed to spend writing an art history essay, I instead spent in the library trying not to cry as Ernesto did his best to salvage my waterlogged computer. I had walked in the rain for 7 minutes, and 7 minutes was enough to ruin the laptop.
NOT! Because my computer is a FIGHTER and on the third day (or the fifteenthth day) it was risen from the dead in glory and splendor and with minimal screen damage. Not to draw inappropriate comparisons.. but that MacBook could’ve come straight out of the New Testament.
2. Goodbye, Memory Card
So about 36 hours ago I realized that my camera was missing its memory card. Seeing as how the last place I’d left it was approx. 2 inches away from my trash can, and how I’ve searched EVERYWHERE, I’m assuming it fell in and is now sitting in a landfill next to a bunch of pizza boxes and old tires. It’s unfortunate because the neither the pizza boxes or the tires have any way to enjoy the 594 pictures that were on there, so they’ll assume that Mr. Memory Card is just boring and quiet and they won’t bother starting a conversation when actually he’s got 594 stories to tell if anyone would just say “Hey.”
3. Goodbye, Yellow Sunglasses
I’d been waiting 7 LONG MONTHS for there to be enough sun that I needed to wear these. Two weeks into that long-awaited springtime, I found away to drop, step on, and break the sunglasses all in half a second. That makes these the fourth pair of glasses I’ve stepped on in the past year. Owning glasses = constant heartbreak.
My life won’t ever be the same without the three of you. Even if I try to replace each of you with bigger and better products, a little bit of me will always be stuck saying “Goodbye.” I hope you’ll be saying it back to me.
Top Ten Goodbye Songs (dedicated to Crappy MacBook, Memory Card, Yellow Sunglasses, and all of the other possessions I will someday break or misplace):
10. All I Have (ft. LL Cool J) – J. Lo. For all the times you don’t want to say goodbye. For all the times J.Lo is bouncin’ and you can’t do anything about it but rap to try to convince her to stay. ‘Instead of beefin come hold me, I promise I’m not a phony.’
9. Closing Time – Semisonic This song is the kind of thing that everyone pretends to hate, they roll their eyes when it starts playing and shake their heads at the DJ, but they secretly know all of the lyrics and get sort of sad when it’s over. Also see The Graduation Song by Vitamin C and Good Riddance by Greenday.
8. Cry Me A River – Justin Timberlake So Justin tries to act very strong and detached during this song, but if you listen hard enough, you can tell that it’s hurting him to leave. He’s mad, and when people are mad they act detached and cold, but the verses in falsetto give him away. He’s crying himself a river, that’s how hard it is for him to say goodbye.
7. Won’t Go Home Without You – Maroon 5 I guess this is another song that’s more about not wanting to say ‘Goodbye,’ which makes it close enough to a Goodbye song.
6. Bye Bye Bye – N*Sync
It’s cliche, but it would be blasphemous to NOT have this song on this list. Besides, I’m pretty sure that the Bye Bye Bye Clap has replaced the Wave Goodbye.
5. Let It Burn – Usher There’s a fine line between a regular break-up song and an actual goodbye song. The typical break up song is mostly angry or bitter, and few are as emotionally well-rounded as this one. Or if not well-rounded, it’s a little confusing as to who’s leaving and who’s staying, which automatically makes it DEEP. In a few days when I’m no longer procrastinating for my Modern Art final, maybe I’ll do a post about how Let It Burn fits pretty well into the PostModern scheme of things. You’re welcome in advance.
That’s a joke, I hate postmodern things, postmodernism can push itself off a cliff please and thank you.
4. Ruby Tuesday – Rolling Stones This is the part of the list where things get serious. Like, I hear this song and I actually get sad, and it feels like the louder I sing the chorus the better I’ll feel. I’m saving this one for the last Harry Potter movie – the credits will start rolling and I’ll go, “GOOOOOODBYE, RUUUBY TUESDAY!”
3. You And I Both – Jason Mraz I have nothing snarky to say about this song, because it’s very pretty and a little sad and a lot of fun to sing. It’s also what plays inside my head every time I leave Rochester. One time I heard it in the HyVee gas station right before heading back to NoFo (that’s right) and it made my whole night, because gas stations usually play more annoying things like “Lucky” or “I’m Yours”, not good ones like this. I pretended to consider buying a bag of beef jerky so that I could stick around long enough to hear the whole song play.
2. I’m Gonna Find Another You – John Mayer Recently, I had a conversation with my brother about which John Mayer song he could play for me at the wedding, (since he’s the best brother in the world and is willing to something like that for me) and after the third angsty anti-love song I suggested, we concluded that John Mayer songs might not be the most suitable for the event. They ARE, however, very suitable for So Longs and Farewells, and so this one made it onto this list.
1. Danke Schoen – Wayne Newton Remember that one amazing movie where the beautiful Matt Broderick wins over the city of Chicago with little more than a wink and a couple of dance moves? That amazing movie is the first thing I’m going to watch when I’m done with finals, and this amazing song is the first thing I’m gonna sing when I’m driving far far away from the cesspool that is Carleton College in about a year and four days. Because although Carleton is a terrible place, it’s a terrible place that I somehow care about, and when I say “Goodbye,” I want to do it right.
Pro-Procrastination 
