Personal Space: How Close Is Too Close?

 The study of personal space is called Proxemics.
That's right, it's science.
The personal space bubble. I thought this concept was universally understood. I assumed that everyone was born knowing that there is a requisite amount of distance that must always be kept between yourself and another person.

(Unless of course, you are doing activities where extreme closeness is essential. Such as delivering a baby, tandem skydiving, being the middle person in a threesome, huddling together in a bathtub to escape a fire, being carried out in rescue from a fire, sharing a joint that will later cause a fire, doing the tango, keeping a human warm during a snow storm because you're a werewolf with an elevated body temperature, getting/giving a lap dance, sharing a small prison cell etc.)

Yet I find my naive hopes repeatedly dashed. Not only by those who continue to wear their hair in a mullet despite this being the internationally recognized symbol for 'Fail', but also by the many people whose attitude toward personal space is the same as your grandparents attitude toward the Internet: sure they've heard of it, but everyone knows it's not really a thing.

Well, elderly lady at Target, personal space really IS a thing. And in future, when struggling to gauge where the boundaries of personal space may lie, I implore you to follow this simple guideline;

How Close Is Too Close?
If you exhale and my hair moves, you're too close. Please step back.

Comments

  1. http://everyday-idioms.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/personal-space.html

    ReplyDelete
  2. And if you suffer from halitosis, step back even further.

    ReplyDelete

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