The coolest way to dump someone in 2010: Move overseas.

Remember in Year 8 when you were dating someone you met in the tuckshop line for five weeks (ok, three weeks) (this is presuming you grew up in a small town where same-sex schools were only in movies and actually probably don’t exist in the real world). And then, after several awkward conversations (ok, two conversations) (mostly by telephone), they actually expect you to go on a date with them (asking by MSN, der), and you know your Mum wont let you go to the movies with a boy and you realise he actually wears way too much hair gel anyway so you send all of your girlfriends over to his friends to say “She doesn’t like you anymore, your dumped”. And you would both go your separate ways until English in 5th period where you would be embarrassed and nervous and have sweaty-palms for the entire class. Oh, was that just me? HAHA! Well that is just ridiculous; I would never date someone I met in the tuckshop line and everyone knows the hot guys kick the football at lunchtime.

My long-winded-point is this. Whatever happened to the days when couples broke up in respectable-mature-like ways such as sending four of your teeny-bopper girlfriends over to him to say it was over?

The other night when intoxicated, it seemed through my eyes (beer goggles no less) that everyone I had spoken to who had just come out of a relationship would say exactly the same thing “I (or he) was/am about to move overseas and so we just had to end it”. Nobody ever says anymore “He just watches way too much of the Office and I am sick of him thinking thongs are actually shoes”. Which I believe, would probably be an entirely plausible and only slightly cruel break-up explanation.

It may just be the age I am at (65), and it could be the fact that everyone seems to be graduating from their degrees and starting their Real Lives and embarking upon what I like to call the COST (Compulsory OverSeas Trip), which only slightly ironically will COST you (or your parents, depending on how clever and conniving you are) a LOT of money. And not to be confused with the DEBT (Debilitating Extension of Boring Tertiary –studies, which not as ironically, also leaves law students like me with a large debt, and you don’t even get to leave ).

But it may also be that the reasons couples once broke up don’t really fly anymore.. Once you get to an age where “I’ve just stopped liking him/her” becomes a little bit unrealistic and slightly immature, you need an escape route, an exit strategy, you’ve got to have something better up your sleeve like a Singapore Airlines Ticket and one of those inflatable pillows to hold your head up on the plane so you don’t dribble everywhere.

Or maybe, and this could be a completely ridiculous theory (nothing unusual), it could be that getting into serious relationships makes some people hungrier to get out. To see the world, to dance on tables in foreign countries and maybe not even take their hair-straightener because they just want to be all bohemian and care-free.

The realistic realisation that most Tuesday nights from now on may start to gravitate around watching TV in pyjamas with boyfriend/girlfriend and weekends involve drinking with friends followed by hungover TV watching in pyjamas with boyfriend/girlfriend must surely be a great way to get many young people to walk into Flight Centre and max out their credit cards and say to Katie who may or may not be manning the counter that day “I’d like a one-way ticket to Morocco please”. And then they will get home with their flight details and subject everyone they known on Facebook to a day by day countdown until they leave. “Only 256 days until MORRRROOOCCCCOOOO!!! Yewwww”

HAHA. I’m jealous and bitter you say? AM NOT! I've never heard anything so absurd...Professional bloggers can’t just leave the country willy-nilly you know. They have responsibilities.