Social Distance

the bears practicing social distance
(scale in inches: 1 to 12)

At a staff conference last fall, my colleagues and I were put through an exercise about personal space and everyone’s unique comfort zone. Most folks prefer about a six-inch buffer, which, during a conversation with another, works out to about a foot of space between parties.

Except for me.

Part of the exercise was to pair up and have one person walk toward the other. When the walker got too close for comfort, the standee was to put up a hand and say, “Stop.” I got about a foot from my partner before her hand went up (that hand went up a lot faster when I pretended to be angry—but that was a different exercise).

When it was my turn to put up a hand, my partner ended up literally nose to nose with me. She was probably more uncomfortable than I was, and I confess my ease with her proximity was likely due to me knowing her rather than her being a stranger, but I honestly wasn’t that surprised by my non-reaction.

I generally don’t mind people in my space. In my face, yes, but in my space? Not so much. I respect the space of others, but I’m not bothered sitting beside someone on the bus or standing next to someone at a crosswalk. So the practice of social distancing during the COVID outbreak is proving somewhat challenging for me. I thought nothing of sharing an elevator with a guy from the third floor at the office last week – we stood shoulder to shoulder and laughed about my security card’s superpower of accessing more floors than my own, and only after he had deplaned did I realize we had stood less than twelve inches, let alone six feet, from each other.

It’s a curious time for society, all right. I thought we were isolated from each other before COVID-19! And yet, as I remarked to a neighbour not long after this all started, it’s amazing how social humans really are after we’re told we can’t be social anymore.