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# Give me some space
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/give-me-some-space/
- Published: 2005-11-29T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T01:18:21.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica Airport, #archive-import

*By ANY DAY IN LA BY HEIDI MANTEUFFEL*

Most modern USA dwelling subur-bians have a thing about personal space.

You don’t get in it. If there, you don’t stay in it, and you certainly don’t discuss the topic about taking any more of someone’s away.

And yet when we travel for turkey dinner, there is nothing more compromised than personal space.

Sitting next to strangers with questionable hygiene in the airport shuttle, being repeatedly poked from behind by a rolling carry-on in the baggage check line, and unwillingly being included on cell phone calls to every relative possible in the waiting area is only the beginning of it (Aunt Darcy! Glad the hemorrhoids have healed). The worst invasion of space by far is the two-to four-hour cross-country jaunt in a standard commuter airplane.

The thing we fight for so hard in the grocery check-out line with our plastic dividers has been thrust outside the freezing plane’s window. If you’re flying in economy or business class as most of us are, the seating arrangement is much like sardines in a can, only for the hefty rate of $400 a squat.

You sit closer than you do in everyday life to your own mom to some talkative Jack trying to offer you homemade beef jerky, or arm spasm Jane whose elbows are lined with Bic’s women’s razorblades.

You’re tired, weary and the last thing you want to do is talk about the cold front moving into Chicago. You desperately hope Jack pays more attention to his look alike across the aisle with the “I ate the worm” T-shirt. Then again Jane seems fidgety, and you’re cheering for her to watch “Must Love Dogs” instead of reading the newest Steven King novel (where elbows are sure to go all a flutter).

But there was no such Jack or Jane on my last trip this Thanksgiving. Instead, there were rows and rows of crying babies enveloping me like a Little Debbie cream pie.

In my own row sat a younger mom and her 8-year-old daughter. For the first hour of the flight, this woman’s blanket kept getting pushed into my seat. Not slightly intruding mind you, but she sent four-to six-inch sections at a time flopping my way. So, I’d quietly place the blanket back on her side, like a grownup version of the infamous sibling game, “Don’t Cross the Imaginary Line.”

You’d think that be it. Oh so sorry, blah blah blah and all those perfunctory, insincere formalities. But then she’d do it again, more intrusively, not paying attention to anything but entertaining her young daughter. Then I’d place it back. When it basically got into my lap, I asked her if she could maybe put the blanket in her own seat. Possibly?

Sure she moved it, but I don’t think she felt bad about it. At the end of the flight, she told her daughter a story about the mean people on the airplane that were ruining all their fun.

She told the story after switching seats with her daughter in frustration for not being able to recline her seat backwards due to the car seat behind her.

One could say there was a conflict in her definition of personal space. One could even make it into a story, spoken to a buckled-in bystander with no choice but to listen.

Yes, people get feisty about their personal space. On the way back into the “ring of fire,” also known as O’Hare Airport, passengers were forced to share the single elevator as the escalator to check-in was broken. When my boyfriend, mother and I approached it, a volatile woman quickly blurted out “No space! There’s not enough space. I can’t back up anymore, there’s not enough...”

“Shhh … I audibly told the woman as the doors closed between her and I, as she was acting more whiney than her two young children. Mind you, there were three people in the economy size elevator she was in, and nine people now waiting for the next one to come.

Maybe she had come to last straw of people violating her personal space, poking and prodding, and tapping until there was no more space to give.

I’ve come to realize that traveling is basically like a free-for-all land rush. So it’s no wonder people get disgruntled when their space turns out to be a measly one-foot plot, shared by the likes of Jerky Jeff, Elbow Jane, and a woman who’s already acquired the rights to the entire production. (Heidi)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 29, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/112905.pdf?ref=smdp.com)