Well that's different

As many of you know, saying something is "different"is midwestern parlance to indicate that we dislike, disapprove or are slightly bewildered by something. (Of course it's an interesting window into our worldview that using the term "different" nearly alwaus carries a negative connotation, but I won't go into that here.) So when Ryan called me this afternoon from the dermatologist's waiting room and, replying to my question of how it was, reported it was different, I wondered what he meant. Well, he explained, there's porn in the waiting room. Wow. The choices were a yachting magazine, a medical journal, a Dutch celebrity gossip magazine and porn. Hmmmm . . . I wonder how many doctors offer patients that option in the States. It really is different here, and every now and again it's "different".