Keep Your Distance

Yesterday I went to our local shopping center with Mystical Roo and Monster Noggin.  We'd only popped in to grab some lunch and milk and were there for no more than fifteen minutes but I hated it.  Hated it!  I very much appreciate my own space and I very much don't appreciate people trying to get into my space.  I think this is the country bumpkin in me.  City folk seem to be able to just get on with it, I suppose because they're always surrounded by people and have to do things like share packed trains and cross the road with a horde of other folk.  I shudder at the thought.  What I don't understand is people who get up in my personal space when there is plenty of other space for them to be standing.  What is that about?  It's like when I was in the supermarket, innocently queueing with my bottle of milk.  Why did the woman behind me keep having to shuffle up closer.  Every time I inched forward, she would inch forward also.  Didn't she understand that my inching was not to inch closer to the counter but to inch further away from her.  I could practically feel her breath on my neck.  I think some people are just impatient to get to the counter.  If they close the gap in the queue then of course the person serving is going to move faster.  Of course.  This seems to happen a lot in queues.  People get it in their heads that they have to shuffle closer together.  Shorten the queue and we'll all be waiting for a shorter period of time.  No.  Get rid of the amount of people in the queue and then we'll all be waiting for a shorter period of time.  I have to fight the urge to turn around sometimes and ask the person to back off.  I need my own personal bumper sticker telling people not to tailgate me.  I hate it.  I don't even like people I know getting that close.  Back off people and give me some space.  Maybe I need to stop washing, put people off with my smell or something.  Or just start sneezing really loudly, freak people out with potential germs.  Perhaps I need to get a pointy stick and just poke people who enter my space.  I should get a fenced area that I can place around myself, clearly marking the area that cannot be crossed.  Then I might get some funny looks.  But at least people would keep their distance!