Personal Space and Sidewalk Etiquette

Having been car-less for the past 6 years and living in a city where so many people rely on public transportation and walking, I have to finally comment on personal space and sidewalk etiquette in general. And this can be applied to most cities, I think. Let's say you are walking back from the grocery store with 25 pounds of grocery bags tugging at your rotator cuffs and the sidewalk has a fair amount of people on it. How would you react if you saw me bearing down on you, walking in the opposite direction? The typical, logic thinker would move out of the way realizing that a man of my stature carrying a small refrigerator's worth of food has the right-of-way. Not here. Certainly not here.

Now being one of these logical thinkers, I can justify a certain percentage of these head-on encounters by someone not paying attention for whatever reason; maybe they're talking to a friend who is with them or they may be talking on the phone, whatever. But no, most of these encounters (I've realized recently) are people minding their own business walking in the opposite direction and just completely ignoring my presence. Leaving me to negotiate their presence by shifting my weight and whatever weight I happened to be carrying so they can pass by unscathed.

Which brings me to my other complaint about sidewalk etiquette and that is this dependency that people have where they have to walk next to one another in a group of three or more people. I'm sure many have you seen these moving human walls holding hands or connected arms coming at you in the opposite direction leaving you with the responsibility of getting out of their way. Yes, God forbid that anyone in the group should have to fall behind another and walk single file for six paces. I've never been so aware of my personal space in society until I came here and began walking the streets. It has come to the point where that is exactly what I do: walk in the street rather than on the sidewalk. It just seems to be easier that way.

One more little sidenote about personal space. The library in the school I currently work at (which is rare for a school to have a library in these parts) had recently been constructed to a two story section because the roof is vaulted. The finished product has left the ceiling for the lower level to be (exactly) my height, 6 feet 5 inches tall, and the upper level even shorter in some parts. Do you want to know how many times I've hit my head on the ceiling in this library? Zero. Why? Because I'm completely aware of my personal space and where and how I move my body.