I was at Barnes and Noble the other day and when I went to make my purchase, the girl behind the counter said, “Are you a Barnes and Noble member?” I had to answer no because I wasn’t and if I was, I’d probably have to show the club sign or know a silly handshake.
I flashed back to my clubbing days and half expected to be dragged outside by two men built like tankers who obviously sat in the back of the class. I thought back and I’ve usually been the outsider looking in.
I imagine that being a Barnes and Noble member is some kind of a book club and not a gang and this makes sense as I’ve never seen anyone with an Edgar Allan Poe t-shirt and a raven tattoo while representin with Montague colors.
I don’t know a lot about clubs but they do seem exclusive or exclusionary with the special people trying to keep the not so special people out. I wanted some kind of definition of what a club was and I didn’t like what Wikipedia had to say so I changed the page but I copied and pasted the page about the baseball bat as it made more sense. Not trusting the internet, I went for the safety of the big old musty paper dictionary that was so big it could bring down an elephant.
Webster’s Dictionary has three definitions for a club. The first is two or more people joined by a common interest. A second meaning for club is a room or a building where the club members gather. It is also known as a large wooden stick that club members use to keep people out of their club; and the act of using that club is called clubbing.
The term clubbing took on a second meaning when the club members, after the clubbing, went to the club and danced around to music in celebration of the clubbing.
The wooden club goes back to the caveman days as they didn’t have the verbal skills to say ‘no.’ The club was limiting as they sometimes had to chase gatecrashers so the golf club was invented for the people who ran too fast; the chasers hit little white projectiles at them from a distance.
Everyone is trying to get into a club and be a part of group but groups have rules and those rules exclude others. The people on the outside are trying to get in and the people on the inside are so busy trying to keep the gatecrashers out that they never get around to club business which leads me to believe that the sole purpose of a club is to keep others out of it.
I love India because it doesn’t have clubs but there is a caste system which just means that people are divided into classes but I was told our society is classless, which is an understatement.
On the highway, there are tolls and they were created to pay for the building of a bridge or roadway and once it was paid for, the toll was knocked down and the toll trolls had to find some other sort of work. This isn’t the case with tolls anymore and just like the bully who takes your lunch money to buy his own lunch, he doesn’t stop taking your money when he’s full; he wants more.
The EZ Pass system was supposed to making things easier but the people who run it have quite a racket going. They’ll let you in the club but you have to give them a $25 cover charge; and they hold that money ransom so you have no choice but let them keep it to stay in the club. And if you don’t want in, you have to wait in line behind all of the other people who aren’t club members which is exactly where the club members are because some non-club members think they can sneak past the bouncer at the front door only to be turned away at the last minute and then cut in line at the front as they’re forced to inch their way ahead of the other non-club member who waited as the club members scream and throw half filled coffee cups at them. As Dustin Hoffman says while on the highway, 'EZ Pass sucks'. The next time I go through EZ Pass, I’m going to bring a club and half a cup of coffee.
I escaped to the haven of the grocery store where there’s no club, long lines of pissed off people, or bouncers at the door. I selected my items and realized that there are two sets of prices on the shelf. One is for club members (who new grocery stores were snobbish) and the other is for those of us who weren’t cool enough to get in the club.
Bread is $2 if you’re a member and $14 if you’re not and I think I might have joined but I didn’t really put much thought into it until I got to the register and I realized I brought my spare set of keys and my club card key fob, if I had one, was on the main set and I wasn’t sure which email address I opened the membership under so my total that would have normally been under $5 now totals around $112.50.
I started to sweat and realized I hadn’t showered since that morning which was ten hours earlier and the deodorant aisle was almost a hundred feet away so I kept my arms pressed to my side so I wouldn’t arouse suspicion.
I explained the lost keys situation to the cashier and spurted out a dozen emails which I thought I opened the card under and I got down on my knees and begged her to believe me. Then she put her own card through which got me the discount but I was still sweaty and clubless even though I had a wallet full of club cards, none of which kept me protected.
Everywhere around, there are clubs and groups; it’s tough to escape. I am now anti-club and against groups as I want to just be an individual but there are a bunch of different people like me so in attempting to avoid others, I’ve now become aligned with some of them and I’m back to a group again.
When I was growing up, everyone at church had a cross around their neck saying there were in the Jesus club and now we have the Livestrong wristbands which resemble the wrist gear from actual night clubs which is why I take my off when pulled over by the police because I don’t feel like explaining to the cop that the band is Lance Armstrong and not Jose Cuervo.
I was told that Facebook was a great was to make new friends and reconnect with people from the past. I signed up and I have a lot of friends but unless tended a virtual farm, entered the mob, or became a Facebook vampire, I was once again leaning against the wall watching everyone else dance and I realized that being in the club but not participating in any of the club events, is worse than not being in the club at all.
All of this talk about clubs has made me a little hungry and I’m going to the diner as I don’t need a membership card, a gang sign, a handshake, or a bribe to get in. And I’m going to order the club sandwich before they realize I’m not a member.
