The Incredible Shrinking Personal Space

So I'm in the security line at the airport this afternoon and it's unbelievably long. I take the same flight on the same day every week and today was the first time in a long time that the line was this long. In all, it took half an hour to get through security; so long that my flight was already boarding by the time I made it through.

Of course, it was my good fortune that the woman standing behind me in the security line made it a point to bump into me each and every time the line moved. A line long enough to take 30 minutes to get through moves often, if not quickly. Any time the line moved a centimeter, the woman behind me stepped up six inches -- which means she bumped into me each and every time...for half an hour.

I tried to distance myself from her by keeping my luggage at arm's length behind me, thus making it impossible for her to bump into me. Not to be thwarted, she then started bumping into my bag instead of my body. Then I tried to avoid moving any time the line moved some infinitesimally small distance and restricted my movements to meaningful advances in the line. My bumpy neighbor decided to move every time the people in front of me moved whether I moved or not.

Unable to hold my tongue any longer (and afraid to bludgeon her to death for fear of missing my flight) I turned to her to say, "Please stop doing that." Before the word "please" was out of my mouth, she said "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," which said to me that she knew exactly what she had been doing for the preceding half hour.

What I don't understand is how she thought bumping into me constantly would get her through the security line any faster. Bumping into me didn't make the dozens of people in line in front of me disappear. It didn't cause them to separate their laptops and liquids from the rest of their belongings any faster. It didn't even cause that ten-second delay that each person who goes through the scanner must wait to go by any more quickly. So what did she get out of it?

Patience is a virtue. This woman definitely needs Angry Birds.