ancient TP

I never imagined a stick or ceramic. 🤯 Grateful to have been born in a time where we have what we have.

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When I went on a trip almost 50 years ago.... I saved pieces of toilet paper from the different countries we visited. LOL. I know...... Head shaking..... But it was so strange... I thought everything would be like in the U.S. The bathroom situation and culture shock about did me in. My Dads family immigrated to the U.S....and we did a trip to discover what it was like for his family. He tried to explain... to prepare me....but gosh.... I was astounded and so very grateful to live where I lived.

Some of the toilet paper was rough, some like sponges, some like wax paper.... And in some places it was literally like newspaper or magazines. It wasn't all like toilet paper in the U.S. I saved pieces and stuck them in my photo book with the photos.

And the first time I asked for a bathroom and it was literally this hole in the middle of the floor I about passed out. No toilet...just a hole.... Yikes!!! Never been so glad to return to a country with toilets..... I don't think I ever complained about outhouses in the south or hard camping ever again...lol...

Oh Flowers, there are many people who squat on public toilets. They don't want their delicate bums to touch the dirty toilet seat. So they make the toilet seat dirty by standing on it. I have come into public bathrooms and seen muddy footprints on the seat. So gross.

In parts of Asia they still use squat toilets (have come across them in Japan and Taiwan), as well as standard western toilets. These are Very advanced nations (in some ways more advanced than the US I might add), but the squat hole in the ground is part of the culture. I managed to avoid using them - mostly because i was afraid I wouldn't be able to aim in the right place, or would get pee on my clothes - but many of the places i visited offered both types of toilet. I did have a giggle at the airport in Tokyo where the toilets also had a sign with someone standing and squatting on the toilet seat crossed out in red, because to us it seems ridiculous. But the fact that people use other types of toilets in other parts of the world does not mean they are backwards or having it worse than in the US. In fact I was pretty shocked by many of the public toilets in the US because the gaps around and under the doors of the cubicles are so massive you can see inside and you can see people's legs/shoes when they're sitting on the toilet. Now to me this lack of privacy seems rather primitive....

I remember when I was a kid in the 1960s there were a lot of public toilets where you had to put a dime in the stall door to open it -- pay toilets. Since there were 6 of us kids in my family, when someone had to use the toilet we all had to go along and take turns so we only had to pay 10 cents for all of us -- when we were done, we held the door for the next one lol

There was a Seinfeld episode where Elaine was in a stall that was out of TP and she begged the person in the stall beside her to pass her some TP under the divider "please, do you have a square to spare" lol. At the end of the episode she saw the woman who wouldn't pass her any TP. So Elaine ran into the rest room ahead of her and ran out clutching all the TP lol. (You had to see the episode lol)

Love Seinfeld... can you tell? LOL.

I remember visiting Monaco decades back while Princess Grace was still reigning, then I wondered why she didn't improve the public rest room nearest the palace!!!! It just had floor holes + swarms of flies in early June, ugh!!!! / Old Hat