One time several years ago, before I had traveled much at all, a friend of mine, old like me who had gone back to graduate school, reported a bathroom experience. (His being a male and me living with males, I found this conversation normal.)
“The guy was squatting on the toilet seat,” he said, very disgusted. K was very liberal and very smart and from a socialist country and I was surprised at his derision even though the idea was initially pretty disturbing.
“On top, Janet, his shoes one either side of the toilet seat,” he reiterated.
It wasn’t until the drive home I realized why the guy did it. He thought it was the American version of the eastern toilet, basically a weird, severely off-the-ground squatter. He wasn’t ‘western’ affiliated.
Well, yeah. I can only imagine what he must have thought of western engineering and why two foot high squatters that required precariously perching on the rim of them, was the norm in every bathroom he visited at the medical center where he worked. And everywhere he went in America. I have no idea where his mind went when he finally determined that his naked butt cheeks were to be