Greetings everyone, and welcome to this edition of What Grinds My Gears, the monthly column in which I rant about things that drive me nuts… Even though you didn’t ask!

For this month’s edition I am going to talk about another one of my pet peeves, which is people getting in my personal space without being invited there.

Now I understand that sometimes getting uncomfortably close to someone is unavoidable, especially in places that typically have a large amount of people.

I know in some cases people don’t have any option but to enter my personal bubble — like on crowed public transportation — and those aren’t the times that I am talking about in this article.

I am talking about people who get unnecessarily close to me for some unknown reason.

In my opinion you really shouldn’t be within the distance of a persons arms reach if it is avoidable, unless if you were invited into their personal space. I am a person who is not very touchy feely — my friends and family can attest to the fact that I am not huge on physical affection such as hugging. I just really don’t like being touched in most cases.

Some of the most frequent things that I experience in life that are related to this pet peeve are people getting unnaturally close to me when we are talking… News flash: if you aren’t telling me a secret or we aren’t in a place that warrants whispering then you don’t need to be so close to me that I can feel your breath on me.

Another one that bothers me, but doesn’t happen quite as frequently since I cut my hair: when I had really long hair (like sophomore year long), people would just walk up and start playing with my hair, which is super intrusive and not cool… First off, I styled it to look however it does and you manhandling just ruins the work I put into that morning. Secondly, our hands carry all sort of oils on them and when you touch my hair you are transferring those oils into my hair which makes it greasy and it’s super annoying.

I understand some people are the exact opposite of me and are super touchy feely… So if you are one of those people and I have offended you by avoiding some sort of avoidable physical interaction with you, the old cliché works great in this situation – “It’s not you, it’s me.”

But unlike your high school significant other that fed you that line, I really mean it.

…and that’s what grinds my gears.