unexpected niceties

I've been sick.  Got a nasty cough and lots of snot.  Not to mention the muffin feet of last week.  Finally got to go to the doctor but I knew it was going to cost me.  It's hard enough to get a doctor's appointment with no insurance, but you sure aren't likely to get out cheap.  At least not to my experience.

The doctor's office was quiet and the doctor was prompt.  He wrote me several prescriptions to cover what I was missing (had not been able to refill anything due to insurance change) as well as to cover my current ills, along with an order for some blood tests, and sent me on my way.  As I checked out, I asked what I needed to pay, and the response was "oh, just fax us a copy of your insurance card when you do get it".  Wow.  So, did they at least want the co-pay?  No, just wait and I can call them with a credit card number.  No problem.  Wow again.  They did not know me from Adam's housecat, and they let me walk with a handful of prescriptions and all my money intact.  Pretty sweet.

The next day I went to the hospital to have the blood drawn for the tests.  Explained once again that I did not yet have my insurance card and was prepared to pay out of pocket.  "Oh, don't worry about that, just call this number when you do get insurance and give them the information and they can just file it then".  What?  Okay - doctor's office was one thing, but getting out of a hospital without paying a dime???  What's wrong with these yankees?  They're supposed to be rude and untrusting.  Am I on candid camera?  Is this "mess with a southerner" day?

Honestly, I don't think I could walk out of my Huntsville doctor's office - where I'd been a patient for almost 10 years - without paying anything.  Maybe people around here tend to pay their bills.  Or at least people in Elmhurst, which admittedly is a pretty high-end part of town.  An unexpected graciousness that was much appreciated - something I really did not expect.

I had already noticed that people here are not "yankees" the way that, say, New Yorkers or Philly-ers are yankees.  In my experience the people in Chicago had always been pretty nice, in some ways moreso than southerners.  I guess Chicago, being "mid-west" rather than "up north" is a little different.  Take the traffic, for instance.  There is constantly heavy traffic here. Back home, if you try to change lanes in front of someone, they're more likely to speed up than to let you in.  Here, probably because they deal with this traffic every day, it's expected that people are going to need to change lanes and cut in front of you.  And it's fine.

People in stores speak to you, people say excuse me, and hold doors, and do all the things that I'm accustomed to, but that I've heard aren't common outside of the south.  Maybe that's one reason I feel fairly at home here - if I could just add some crickets and a "y'all" now and then, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.  Well, except for the size of the buildings.  And the traffic.