You might have heard of “Minnesota Nice,” but as far as I’m concerned, it stops right where my personal bubble starts. Throughout my childhood, I didn’t like to touch people in public. I’m not talking about regular public displays of affection, although I rarely support that either. I am talking about defending my own sense of personal space. Whether someone happens to back into me, smear their sweaty limbs all over me or clumsily step on my toes, touching strangers in public is no fun at best and more often just plain gross.
While you might think that this cold aversion to personal contact has grown as an unfortunate byproduct of aging through the teen years, just the opposite is true. In fact, I think I have shrunk my personal space bubble down to a more healthy, manageable size. While I am not nearly as freakish as I used to be, the bottom line remains. In a crowd of people, I want you to get the hell out of my way.
According to my mom, as a toddler I would often sit smiling in my stroller, seemingly content with a pacifier in my mouth. If stroller traffic got a little backed up, I would project the pacifier from my mouth as I screamed, “MOOOOOVE.” People would look around, unable to believe that the small blond toddler in the ducky swimsuit was responsible for such a command. But most importantly, they moved.
While I no longer bark traffic directions at innocent bystanders, no type of situation offers more opportunity to laugh at others than those involving transgressions of personal space. Just look around and you will see what I mean. Here are a few of my worst.
I walked into Reiss 103 late last semester and took a seat towards the back of the auditorium. We must have had a test coming up, because the large lecture hall was almost full. For some reason, my friend and I used our worst lecture hall etiquette and sat on the very end seats in the row, making every single other student who wanted to sit in our row stumble over our desks and bags. While we should have moved down once we realized what we had done, what happened next validated our rude insistence on holding our ground. Unwilling to haphazardly stumble over us like all the other kids had done, one guy confidentally walked up to me and asked, “Butt or crotch?” which, when said quickly, sounds a lot like just “butter crotch.” Before I could even realize that he was asking me which side I wanted to be subjected to in his clumsy attempt to pass me by, or for that matter mutter a “what the hell?” under my breath with a confused glance, a girl two seats down enthusiastically screamed, “Crotch!” The guy scrambled over me crotch-first, exerting minimal effort to avoid the awkwardness. It was a done deal.
While pretty much anyone who is normal can realize that putting your butt or crotch in someone’s face is weird, other invasions of personal space are harder to spot, especially when they are embedded in differing cultural practices. My mom visited me a few weeks ago at school and met my roommates for the first time. As I introduced her to all my friends, I wasn’t surprised when some got up off the couch to shake her hand while the more shy people lingered by the walls with respectful smiles on their faces. What I did not foresee, however, was the greeting my roommate from Miami would offer. As my mom reached out to shake her hand, my roommate decided to skip the simple handshake and go for the whole hog greeting?embracing her and promptly kissing my mom on the cheek. In Minnesota, this bold move would constitute the grand slam of all informal greetings and might even qualify for sexual harassment. All the while, my mom just continued to smile along. All I could come up with to diffuse the situation was the resigned explanatory statement: “We don’t do that in Minnesota.”
Everyone has undoubtedly experienced such cultural awkwardness, and I am not naive enough to think that not every single one of you has had a huge butt or crotch shoved in your face as someone climbs over you in class. That leaves just one more thing: straight up weird invasion of personal space. Experiences of this type are harder to define, but the shrill sound of your own personal space bubble popping should be enough to sound the alarm. When you see one, well you just know it. Or in my case, when you thumb one, well you sure won’t forget it. While I never used to hesitate in telling someone to back off or “mind the bubble,” the all-out bizarre in weird social interactions has become a low-key hobby of mine. Here is my best, and most recent, example.
A couple of weeks ago at New South on a Sunday night, I was waiting in the salad bar line, and got kind of bored?It’s a long line. I looked around, checked out the soups, glanced at what my neighbors were eating and finally settled into a daydreaming hunger daze. As my eyes glazed over my surroundings, I suddenly noticed that my eyes had stopped on the forearm of the girl next to me in line. I’m not quite sure how to describe what happened next, and I have no idea why it even happened in the first place. As I told my friends later, I “thumbed” her. I simply picked up my hand and arm, stuck out my thumb as if to hitch a ride, and placed it, pad first, on the forearm of the girl next to me. She was obviously freaked out?I would have been too. At this point, I should probably apologize to that particular girl?Sorry. It was weird, I know. I can’t imagine into existence a valid reason as to why I thumbed her. I do know, however, know that my weird personal space interactions can’t get much worse. And just maybe I should start working on enlarging that bubble again.
Chris Jarosch is a sophomore in the College and assistant Voices Editor of the Georgetown Voice. She will touch your ceiling … repeatedly.
