"...a different sort of elevator music"

A couple days ago, I'd been thinking about the concept of personal space and also about how isolated we are from each other in our communities, even though we live in such close proximity. And then as if on cue, I had a strange encounter on the elevator at work yesterday that closely examined BOTH of these ideas at once.

There was a bearded brown gentleman in a turban and a suit jacket lingering in the hallway by the elevator, but he hadn't pushed the button to call a lift. So I press down, and patiently wait to get in. The lift arrives, I hop in and hit '2' to go downstairs. The dude looks at me from outside and as the doors begin to close, he decides to hop in as well, staring at me the whole time. So I move over to one side as per elevator etiquette. Unspoken rule number 1: divvy up the total square footage between the number of riders, meaning we each should've had half the elevator as our personal space. But as he enters, he stares at me, and stands right beside me. Unspoken rule number 2: in general, thou shalt face forward in an elevator. But nope, this guy decided he was going to face sideways so he could continue looking at me. And then he began singing/ mumbling a tune that resembled a Bollywood song, and started to sort of dance on the spot. I'm not even joking. If I wasn't so uncomfortable with the way he was essentially breathing into my ear, staring at me, while making a different sort of elevator music, I think I would have laughed at the absurdity of the whole experience. Instead, I chose to deal with it in the way that typical city folk do, I pretended he wasn't there.

Weird.