My dentist, who is very good at what she does, spent her youth in London. Which of course informed many of her cultural touchstones.
Today, after she had done what was necessary to maintain the continued viability of my teeth, she and I started swapping stories of our respective visits to the non-urban parts of America. Whereupon she told me the following tale.
Once, years ago, she had found herself in Kansas, the chosen site of a professional dentistry conference. At some point she and her colleagues went to a local diner for a meal.
My dentist, in true British fashion, asked the waitress for a cup of hot tea. The immediate result was confusion, and a hasty consultation between the waitress and her manager.
After some back and forth, they managed to come up with a workable solution. “We have iced tea,” the waitress informed her. “We can just heat that up for you in the microwave.”