Most people who meet me, in a house-flat\not-a-tent\seat-centric context find it odd that I want, and will, squat on the floor from choice. It sometimes takes them a while to realize that this is a choice; I'm often in places where seats, in the body of the kirk, have run out. So they assume that I squat on the floor from politeness.
I'm most comfortable when squatting on the floor. I've more-or-less forgotten that I'm odd in this regard. But since my wife and I completed the decoration we have allowed a couple of outsiders in to our house. They have noticed, for they have visited before, that as I have more floor-space that I use it squatting-frog-fashion by choice.
"He can't be comfortable in that position", is what they say, in gist. In fact they look at my wife with lips that suggest that either she is a 'neil mustn't have a chair' nut-job or she's made a very bad life choice in picking me. After all, normal people sit on seats. That's the default position, if you don't like sitting on seats then you have to be somewhat odd.
Why am I comfortable squatting? Because I'm stick-thin and my parents bought hippy leather-chairs. These points probably need a wee bit of explanation. Actually all you need to know is that whatever virtues the leather-chairs' had sitting on them was like being a water molecule in a glacier: you were going downhill. In short: you had to learn how to sit on the carpet.
The carpet was a poly-amide ridge-and-furrow day-glow nonsense that hurt your feet. Or whatever part of your body rested on it.
Hence evolution is true or false.
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Hi Neil,
Very jealous of your ability to squat down like this. I've been trying, in a desultory fashion, for years to manage this, and I can now manage with shoes pretty easily. I spent many hours with the front of my foot on a step and the rest of me lowered some inches below, yet made no real progress. It wasn't until I tried putting an olympic weightlifting bar on my back that I was able to make the progress I now see (I've got a messed-up shoulder at the moment as recompense).
My desire to squat properly was born in Bengal where everybody does it so easily, thin, fat, whatever. I could just about sit cross-legged (despite the pain of a bad knee) but for squatting I was always on my toes. I (nearly) remember reading that old men and women in villages were noted for having three heads (or three knees; hence nearly remembered: it's one of the two) as that is what they looked like sitting in the dying light of the day.
BTW, started reading the maths stuff from the early chapters of CLRS the other day (need to find a new job), and it's still difficult
#:|Tom|