Tibetans Explain What 'Suck My Tongue' Means. It's Not What You Think.

[Hekate]

36. First & foremost, Roman Catholic priests come from our own culture, so we'd look askance with good

…reason because a line would have been crossed in our own culture. We think tongues and cheek-kisses are sexual — but then, we think everything to do with children is sexual. I have known American families where a brief kiss on the lips between parent and child is considered very loving — whereas in my parents’ household this was Not Done.

As someone said, in context the tongue thing was a grandpa joke on the old monk’s part, and a mistranslation between his broken English and a custom considered innocent in his culture.

What if one of our elders did the “gotcher nose” trick where it ends with the adult’s thumb sticking out from between the adult’s fingers? The child would giggle and the adults would look indulgent. What if a tribe of foreigners then howled that the thumb was in reality a stand-in for a penis and this was the most gross thing conceivable to expose an innocent child to?

I found the Vice article fairly compelling. YMMV.