Our hotel room's huge whirlpool bath was operated by three controls. Instead of a simple on-off switch --- how Teutonic, how crude -- it had a notched dial outside the button. You turned the dial so the notch was away from the indicator you wanted, then pushed the button.
Even more of an engineering challenge was the shower. First you must turn it on. Lift a small lever set into the side wall and you have flow. Now rotate the lever to control temperature. Naturally, there is no faucet -- you take us for fools, signore? -- instead it is cleverly concealed inside the knob you turn to open the drain plug. So while the whirlpool switch used two buttons where one would do, for the faucet a single knob served a double purpose.
Now there is flow ... that must be directed toward your nude and chilly target, and two candidates: a sleek modern cobra-headed handheld, and a high-mounted incongruously anachronistic overhead the size of a garden watering bucket, six inches or more across. On the wall is a small plunger, suitable for flushing an Italian toilet. Push it. Water ceases spewing out of the drain control and the cobra leaps in your hand. Progress!
How to send water to the big shower head, the only one you can use without holding it? Above the skinny wall plunger is another, fat, knob, maybe two inches in diameter. Press it in -- it goes maybe a quarter of an inch -- and the cobra flinches. Release and the button pops out, the cobra returns to life. You try holding the button. Trickling noises climb the wall like fluid mice in the wainscoting. Moments later, cold rain falls from above. Ah, the pipes, the pipes, the Italian pipes! You wait. Soon it is warmth.
Now for the last, hardest puzzle. You sought the high shower to use both hands, but to maintain its flow, you need to provide continuous pressure on the wide button. You discover that by leaning to the right, where your hipbone protrudes, you can provide enough force to hold it in, leaving both hands free for shampooing and soaping.
A tall skinny naked guy, arms upraised to shampoo, foam cascading down his bony shoulders and scrawny chest, right hip out-thrust in a classical pose, serving as a cleverly disguised support for the slim load-bearing right leg. A sculpture, L'uomo vecchio Americano sottile in la doccia, by a minor Greek or Roman master, or more likely a Bernini out-take, rejected by its outraged patron for its frank and unflattering depiction of the subject.