americans won't use toilet paper to blow their nose

Once or twice I have offered toilet paper to an American who needed to blow their nose.

I won't make that mistake again.

They look as if I had offered them used toilet paper, at least.

Seemingly unrelated, but related story:

A nice dinner in Sweden, especially on the West coast, likely features seafood of some kind. Sometimes nothing else, except for toast and sharp cheese. It's very good.

I remember listening to an American who had been invited to an upscale version of a dinner like that. He was in shock. The hostess, seated next to him, had been using her fingers, and the juice from the crab and the lobster and the shrimp had been all over her hands and forearms. He said she had behaved like an animal. He was appalled and intrigued at the same time.

I said that's how you eat seafood in my country. He didn't believe me.

One of my best friends goes fishing a lot when she visits her parents on the West coast where we grew up. Then she transports her crab and lobster and fish across the country to Stockholm where she lives. She and her mom (who boils the lobster and the crab, and boy are they delicious) has perfected a system for her to get them home safe and still frozen.

When I visit my friend in the summers, I get to pick what I want to eat. I am so happy I don't know what to do with myself. We eat in her kitchen. The juice from the crab or the lobster is all over our hands and forearms, but we dry ourselves off before eating a piece of toast, or drinking some wine. That's how you do it.

What we use to dry ourselves? Had it been my parents' house, or most other people's houses, it would have been paper towel. There would be a roll sitting right there on the table. Informal and practical.

At my friend's house it's toilet paper. She can't be bothered to buy both paper towel and toilet paper. She says it's the same stuff anyway, just cut differently. There is always a roll of toilet paper in her paper towel holder on her kitchen wall.

So that's a cultural difference right there.

(And in our country paper towel and toilet paper actually are the same. Swedish toilet paper is sturdier than the American version. But that's another story.)