Wide stance

I've had a lot of trouble lately being seated next to guys who seem to have no proper sense of other people's personal space.

It's a common sociological observation that men tend to have a far more pronounced sense of entitlement to the space around them than women do. My completely unscientific personal observation over the years is that this is directly proportionate to the man's ego. The self-centered, boistrous, chip-on-the-shoulder, don't-mess-with-me types feel an absolute sense of ownership of whatever space they may occupy, or want to occupy, and don't care whose toes they step on in the process--literally or figuratively.

The space under a poker table is tightly limited, especially those that seat ten players instead of only nine. You would think that this would necessarily impose automatic limits on how players arrange themselves. But no. There are a fairly small number of men--pardon my sexism, but I have never once observed a woman to share this tendency--who just don't care how much space they are rightly entitled to under an equitable division. They want what they want, end of story. They will sit with limbs all akimbo, and dare anybody to tell them they can't or shouldn't do so.

A couple of weeks ago at Mandalay Bay I was next to one of these boors. He was going to sit with his legs splayed far enough apart that he could get a prostate exam without changing positions, and damn'd be him who first cries, "Hold, enough!"*

The guy wouldn't take a gentle hint. Several times I "accidentally" bumped into his leg when moving mine entirely within the space directly in front of my chair. The socially normal response to this situation is to realize that one has intruded outside of one's proper bounds, apologize, and withdraw. Not this maroon. Three times he disregarded my attempts to move him off. The solution came only when he got up to use the restroom. While he was gone, I moved his chair a few inches away, and got my legs arranged to the outer edges of my rightful space, prepared not to yield. As it turned out, a good defense was indeed the best offense. Having staked out my claim in his absence, he was unable to resume his previous territorial invasion, and the conflict ended.

Of course, one could take the direct approach and simply ask the rude person to take his knees back to where they belong. But I have many times witnessed simple, stupid conflicts like this escalate at the poker table to the point that they become angry, involve the dealer and floor person, bring the game to a halt, etc. I prefer handling things under the table, so to speak.

Feet can intrude, too. Last week at Planet Hollywood I was in seat 1 next to the dealer. The tall guy on my left was at roughly a 45-degree angle to me because of how the table curves. He apparently felt like he had gotten the bonus seat and was entitled to whatever space his long legs could reach to. If I moved my feet from off of the foot-rest rail, he would quickly move his right foot there. I suppose he either didn't think about it, didn't care, or just felt that if I wasn't going to be occupying that spot for a while, he might as well do so. But then when I needed a shift in position and wanted to put my feet back up, I had to run him off.

There can also be problems aside from the physical intrusion. That same night, at a different table, I had been in seat 2 when seat 6 was occupied by an enormously obese man. He was so fat that he couldn't sit facing the table like normal people, but had to sit facing to the side. He chose to face my way. Because of the huge mass of abdominal fat, he also couldn't easily keep his legs straight out in front of him, but instead splayed them as far apart as he could, with his bulky pannus resting directly on the chair between his fat thighs. This would have been unattractive enough all by itself, but it was infinitely worsened by the fact that the zipper on his shorts (yes, shorts) was down and his fly as wide open as his knees. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! My eyezzzzzzzzzzzzzz! It burns! Or, as Colonel Walter E. Kurtz might say, "The horror! The horror!" (I whipped off a text message to Cardgrrl about this ghastly sight. She replied, "Do NOT send me a picture!")

This stuff isn't complicated. You are entitled to your chair and the space immediately in front of your chair, in roughly a wedge-shaped segment. Think of the poker table as a pie with cuts made from the center, radiating outward. You get the space between cuts. Yeah, some pieces are bigger than others, and they're all somewhat differently shaped, because the table is oblong rather than round. Tough. That's how it goes. Move to a place that has more space if you feel you need it. I'm pretty small, but I definitely like the maximal amounts of buffer space around me, which is one of the major reasons I prefer the two seats next to the dealer--they have more elbow room than any others. When the dealer "squares up" the table to re-allot the available space fairly, those two seats virtually never have to adjust, because they are farther away from their neighbors than any other.

I'm not so territorial that I will defend my leg space to the death, but I will use whatever subtle, annoying, and sneaky tactics that I deem necessary to allow my legs and feet to move freely and comfortably within my allotted space, and make you keep yours where they belong. Good fences make good neighbors, and all that. I just wish that people had enough decency to keep things to themselves to begin with so that I didn't have to bother shooing them away.


Incidentally, I am aware of the oddness of using the word "stance" to refer to a sitting position. I chose it only because of the notoriety the phrase "wide stance" received in connection with the 2007 Larry Craig scandal and his alleged explanation of what happened. As reported by Wikipedia:

According to the arrest report prepared by Sgt. Dave Karsnia, "Craig stated
... He has a wide stance when going to the bathroom and that his foot may have
touched mine." Craig never used the term "wide stance" himself. According to the
transcript of the police interogation, Sgt. Karsnia asked: "Did you do anything
with your feet?" and Craig replied: "Positioned them, I don't know. I don’t know
at the time. I'm a fairly wide guy."

I don't think I'd want Larry Craig sitting next to me at a poker table.



*I suppose that this reference is obscure enough that I should probably explain it. It's from MacBeth, Act 5, Scene VII. I played MacBeth in a highly abbreviated version of the play in sixth grade, and, as I suppose the teacher hoped would happen, a bunch of random lines and phrases from it have stuck in my brain ever since, only to pop out at odd moments like this.