What personal space?

[fancycwabs]

Dear Miss Manners,

I go to church this morning, arrive a little early, and sit mostly in the middle of one of the pews. There's a family of three sitting maybe ten feet away on my right, and nothing but vast empty pew for twenty feet to my left. The church begins to fill up, as much as it can fill up on a non-holiday Sunday, which is to say about 1/3 full.

An older (60s? 70s?) couple walks in and moves onto the pew where I'm sitting, and the wife moves all the way down and sits about six inches away from me. Then she half-stands, and scoots to within about three inches of me. Then she repeats the motion, and scoots to where she's actually physically touching me. With her old lady smell and everything.

Would it have been appropriate to stand up and chastise her? Move quickly away? Freak? As it was, I waited for the first opportunity to stand in the service, and took one giant step to the right--moving three feet down. When we sat down again, she scooted some more, but couldn't close the gap.

Also, the liturgist forgot the Lord's Prayer.

Yours, Fancycwabs.

Comments

[box-of-rocks.livejournal.com]

Picture this: 2 15/16 year old kids with no driver's licenses go to the movie theater on a weekend afternoon. Remarkably, the entire theater is empty, so the kids are free to make out during the whole movie without bothering anyone. Alas! At the last minute an older man comes and sits right next to the kids, in the back of the theater, even though he has THE REST OF THE THEATER to choose from. And the teens did wail and gnash their teeth in dispair.