People don’t seem especially interested in joining a club or group these days. Or so that’s the school of thought.

I’ve heard that lament with great frequency from probably every organization that I come in contact with, many of them concerned that their membership numbers are down, and that puts their present in a quandary and their future in potential jeopardy.

How to get more people interested is the million-dollar question with an elusive $500,000-times-two answer.

This recurring topic about being a part of a group or being a member of something made me think of my own experiences — or lack of — especially since I’ve considered myself more of an observer than a joiner. If I joined everything I observed through my job at the newspaper, I’d need another job just to pay annual dues.

In my own defense, I’ve tried to be part of something bigger than myself.

During my grade school years, for example, I gave 4-H a shot, but it was short-lived. I was with the Snappy Needle Pushers, which in retrospect seems like a strange name for a youth group, but our mission to sew was “so” not right for me. Even doing a simple hem on a tee-towel was a struggle.

I quit and thought I’d never recover, never have my confidence restored, be forever humiliated by my lack of thread-and-needle know-how.

But later I would meet my Better Half, a Cub Scout dropout after one meeting. A Popsicle stick project could no way hold the interest of a kid who just wanted to be outside playing baseball.

I wasn’t in any groups as a teenager either, unless gym class counts, and that fosters bad memories about ugly uniforms that did little for the self-esteem of self-conscious teens such as myself.

The Crew House Museum in Richmond has a second floor devoted to Jefferson Union High School memorabilia, and it’s no surprise to me that no one donated a gym class uniform from the 1970s for display. If someone had, visitors surely would turn their heads away in horror. You had to wear that?

Ironically, the historical society is one group that I am a member of along with another Richmond-based group, but not initially of my own doing. It’s because my mother as a member of both organizations herself signed me up for membership and paid my dues.

Now there’s an effective strategy! A parent orchestrating a daughter’s participation.

So I do belong to a few things other than my family, in which I have a lifetime membership and have paid my dues and have voting privileges.

Belonging to something can be a scary proposition, and I don’t mean just my family.

There’s a bit of a fear factor involved here, and this seems like an appropriate analogy given it’s the month in which Halloween falls.

Imagine yourself a human being full of fresh blood in the midst of vampires a little on the thirsty side. Welcome, prospective member!

I’ve had conversations where people have said they don’t mind maybe joining something, but they don’t want to do anything.

And they surely don’t want to come to meetings and then miss one or two only to discover they’ve been nominated for the presidency.

Better to be named to a committee, which in some cases are now called “teams,” a word not as intimidating or foreboding, so the thinking goes.

I’m not much for group sports or different ways to basically define the same thing.

You say potato, I say spud –either way future french fries.

And it’s all food for thought.

Hope to see you next week — that you’ll consider “joining” me.

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