USA. A living room. My host crossed his own carpet in the same boots he wore in the yard, and I have been quietly managing my feelings about it for two years. I am a guest in this country. Dale's home is his castle, and his law within it is absolute. I will simply describe what my body did. He invited me in. I stopped at the door as eight hundred years of ancestors seized my ankles. There was no genkan. No step. No rack of waiting slippers. The outside simply CONTINUED, carpeted, into the home. "Come on in," Dale said, already across the room. In the boots. The yard boots. "Shall I... remove my shoes?" "If you want, man. Whatever's comfortable." Whatever is comfortable. The decision was returned to me — the one person present with strong opinions and no jurisdiction. I removed them. I always remove them. I will remove them at every American threshold until I die, smiling, while a thousand ancestors exhale in relief. My secret torment: my socks then walk where the boots have walked. The purity I preserve is ceremonial at best. I preserve it anyway. Honor is not logistics. And the local code has its own deep laws. Feet on the coffee table: permitted. Hat at the dinner table: forbidden by grandmothers everywhere. The sacred line exists here too. It is simply drawn at the hat, not the boot. Dale's wife told me privately: "Honestly? I wish everyone did the shoe thing. Less vacuuming." An ally. Inside the castle. I said nothing. One does not start a war between a man and his wife over carpet. A guest does not bring his customs through the door. He carries them quietly, in his socks. At my own door now: a small bench, and a basket of warm slippers in many sizes. Last visit, Dale removed his boots unprompted and said, "When in Rome." I bowed. He pointed at me with both hands. Treaties have been signed with less.