HUNTER: One Meter Squared

If there is one place where my personal bubble is thoroughly taken advantage of on a daily basis, it’s in an elevator. Nothing but one meter squared of empty space that surrounds you with walls, two mechanical doors, and several strangers to forcefully share this space with. It’s often quite unsettling.

I like to refer to these situations of being trapped in a tiny metal contraption with strangers as my ‘elevator moments.’ I could name this moment after many other places where it happens far too frequently(“The T moment”? “The tightly-packed concert moment”?), but elevators are the perfect place to experience these moments in all of their glory, for these little boxes limit your experience to a small, intimate group of strangers.  The smaller the elevator, the more awkward it gets between the various people inside and their subconscious claims for personal space. It’s also interesting to note that sometimes elevators can be much, much more awkward when there’s only one person in the elevator rather than a tightly packed group of people (the exception being if the group of people all know each other and you’re the only stranger. I don’t think there’s anything more awkward than that). When this is the case, and you find yourself trapped in a metal box with one other stranger, the awkward silence in the atmosphere becomes so thick and heavy that it’s practically tangible.

My first instinct when a situation like this happens is to attempt to say something to shatter the awkwardness, to at the very least acknowledge the person who is standing not even a foot away from me. I try to force my bubble to disappear for a couple of seconds. Sometimes I get lucky, but most of the time I end up spending the time staring at the ceiling, counting the lights, carefully looking at any ridges I can find (wow, the architecture in this box is amazing!) and then finally resort to staring at anything on my person, be it a cell phone, bag, shoes or even my bare hands. Finally, before I can think of something clever to say, the elevator doors open, the other person leaves, the moment is over and we all move on with our busy lives.I do believe this awkward elevator problem is widely acknowledged. I was quite pleasantly surprised when one day, as I was trapped in the awkward metal space attempting to mind my own business, the girl I was trapped with suddenly turned around and faced me, asking seconds later if it was awkward to be positioned like that within the elevator. In all honesty, it certainly had been rather . . . odd. She then explained to me that it had been a subject brought up in one of her classes. Indeed, the knowledge that elevators can be very awkward, even up to the positioning of the people within it, is not foreign to us.

In fact, it is quite possible that the infamous ‘elevator music’ that tends to be so calm might be just a way to ease the tension and add some sort of atmosphere to the otherwise silent box. I could go on and on about elevators, but we shouldn’t forget that there’s always an alternative, and a much healthier one at that. But stairs are boring.

Michelle Hunter is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at mhunterg@bu.edu.