There is an expression that many of us use when someone complains about something. We want them to know that we understand and sympathize. Or maybe, we just want them to quit whining about something that all of us experience.

Here’s an example of a couple of things that someone might say to me and then my use of the response expression:

Someone: “I feel like my car is always in the shop.

2nd Someone: “I’m surrounded by morons!”

Me – (to both of them: “Join the Club!”

I use that “join the club” phase quite often. I thought a little deeper about it the other day. I thought about clubs.

I looked up the word “club.” I wondered what an official definition would be. On Wikipedia, I got this very basic meaning. A club is an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal.

 One of the earliest clubs I remember being associated with was called “The Dangerous Club.” This club takes us back to the earlier reference of “being surrounded by morons.” I was chief among the morons who organized this club. There were four or five boys in the club. We were about 10 or 11 years old.

The unofficial mission statement of “The Dangerous Club” was simple: “We do dangerous things and we think it’s fun!” Our clubhouse was inside a shed behind the house of my friend Duane “Fudge” Sickels.

We had trophies in the clubhouse from our expeditions, including a couple of black widow spiders preserved in little jars. Our most prized specimen was a scorpion, which we had caught and preserved as well.

Besides catching poisonous insects, we liked to find scary ledges to dare each other to venture out on in the rock canyons west of Richfield.

I’m suspecting that may be the reason that I have had, up to as recently as the other night, episodes of recurring nightmares about either ledges, heights, spiders and/or rattlesnakes.

And, that’s not even mentioning dreams about bulls. We’d dare each other to run across a corral containing a mean Holstein bull who would paw the ground when he noticed us hanging around.

That boyhood club counterbalanced the Cub Scouts which was the other club we were in at the time. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are clubs of sorts that have helped lots of boys and girls in their formative years. I gather that both organizations have declining memberships now.

Space won’t allow discussion of all the clubs that I could talk about here. I would like to mention that I belonged to 4-H clubs as a kid.

One year we raised rabbits as a project. The name of our club was “The Bunny Boys.” (I guess we would have been ahead of our time if our club had been “The Bad Bunny Boys.”)

I don’t think the leader thought anything of it, but we privately sort of fancied ourselves as somehow very remotely, and mostly innocently, associated with the Playboy Bunny concept. Like I said, we weren’t very smart sometimes.

When you go to the county fair, you notice that 4-H clubs continue in Sanpete County. If you don’t remember what the 4 H’s are, here you go: Head, Heart, Hands and Health.

I’ll fast forward through high school and college with those years of intramural sports clubs and extracurricular stuff. My main “club” during some of those days was being in a rock ‘n’ roll band. Practices were our “meetings” and playing at dances were our “field trips.”

Once I was married, I was soon invited to be involved with service clubs. Most of us are familiar with the Lions Club, Kiwanis Club and Rotary Club, etc. I belonged to the

Jaycees, the Exchange Club, and the Chamber of Commerce at different times. I think that most of these types of clubs have struggled to keep membership up over the past twenty years or so. I had fun and I think that some good was done by those clubs.

For some reason, the new generations don’t seem to be overly interested in their father’s and grandfather’s clubs. It’s a new world, I suppose.

I notice on the internet that there is a sort of club called “Do Something.” It may be an example of the type of club that has more appeal to the new, millennial “breed of cat” that is looking for a way to be involved civically.

I’ll mention just two of this club’s programs. They are: Pregnancy Text and Grandparents Gone Wired.

The first one involves turning young people’s cell phones into “virtual babies” to raise awareness about teen pregnancy. (Don’t ask. I don’t understand it.)

I can easily see value in the second one. This is where young people teach older people technological skills. (I’ve walked up to total stranger teenagers in Wal-Mart and asked for help with my cell phone. And unsurprisingly, they solve my problem.)

There are lots of ways to get involved to make a difference. Joining a club or starting a club can be a way to provide help to others and provide fun and sociality for ourselves.

Back in the nineties, a few of us started a club. It was part book club and part “go to dinner” club. Sometimes we call these kinds of clubs, “meet, eat and burp” clubs. It was a lot of fun for the few years it lasted.

Our senior citizen organizations could use a boost in Sanpete. Maybe that will be my next stop on the club circuit. I’m getting the discounts; maybe I should join the club. — Merrill