My Bubble!

Do you ever cringe when someone stands a little too close for comfort to you and you don't even know them? Close enough you can feel their breath on your skin or even smell their perfume?

When did people feel it was appropriate to get that comfortable with strangers? I always find that uncomfortable that unless I am familiar with them or they are family, I prefer the bubble.

You know the bubble I am referring to, that one that dictates the amount of space directly in front of me and to the side so people don't confuse our relationship as being more than friends so about a foot in each direction. An arms length preferably, unless I invite you into my bubble that is, like giving you a hug upon departing our ways or even saying hello sometimes.

It appears as though society has forgotten those said rules and our personal bubble space is being invaded and no one says anything or they don't seem to care just how uncomfortable you are with that happening.

Take for example what happened this Sunday. We decide to head to the beach because summer is almost at an end and school begins next week. We figured we could squeeze out a little more time and spend the day completely relaxing.

We got to the beach at 10am. It opened at 8am but since we have marine layers in affect here, fancy technical term for clouds at the beach, we decided to wait a bit for it to warm up. So there were a few people begin to stake out their claim on the sand.

You know what I am talking about. Your personal space where you lay out all your stuff, your beach towels, coolers, umbrellas, blankets, and stuff so you know where your boundaries are right?

We have a tendency to move as close to the water as possible to avoid being drenched when the tide comes in and not only that the sand quality is better without all the pieces of driftwood all over the area. We also want to be able to see our kids from our chairs when they head to the water or make sand castles. We also want them to be able to see us from the water just in case they drift out of sight.

We were all enjoying our time of watching the kids build sand castles only to be lost to the waves as they crashed on shore and surrounding the castle like a blanket taking pieces of it back home to the ocean floor. The kids spent the large part of the day playing in the waves, boogie boarding and even watching a school of dolphins just beyond the breaking point of the waves.

We enjoyed lunch with our ocean view and even caught a sailboat race later in the afternoon as the tide was coming in. Life was so relaxing and everyone was having a great time.

Imagine our surprise however when a large, large family placed their belongs and attempted to set up a full blown operational kitchen and living room directly next to my daughters chair that you would have thought they knew each other.

Because they didn't have enough room for their bedroom, their proceeded to occupy the sandy space directly in front of us that if I were to lay out in front of my chair we would have been instantly related.

Anyone feeling it yet?

Not only that, more and more family members kept showing up. They continued to call others from their cell phone and let them know that the house was almost built and where to find it.

Steve and I looked at each other to shut each others mouths as they proceeded to hang open because we simply could not believe it, and looked around the beach and noticed acres of land on the shore line that had not been occupied and wondered why here, next to us, in our personal bubble??

What do you say? The beach is public? No space is really yours right? I mean I can't even park our stuff in front of someone else because I think it's rude. So what do you do?

I mean I could smell the food cooking in their make shift kitchen already and it did not smell good at all. It is apparent that bubbles don't keep odors out.

So we just packed up our stuff and left. We had spent enough time there and we did not want to relocate our belongs for this situation and did not want a family confrontation in front of our kids. As we were walking back to our car and crossing the sand, when Steve and I looked back, we saw the family was adding a dining room and second floor where we had just vacated our space.

Next time, Steve said we were going to have to build our own home and put up caution tape and orange cones. I told him it still wouldn't work, some people just don't see the bubble anymore.