I was going through some articles I’ve saved and and ran across one from the Pittsburgh Magazine website from this May. The headline intrigued. Enough so that I saved the article to my reading list but not so intrigued that I actually read it. The headline in question…

… From Running Clubs to Naked Bowling, Pittsburghers Find Ways to Combat Loneliness.

I used to bowl a lot and I recall feeling naked if I wasn’t wearing an official bowling shirt, but I don’t think that was where this article was going. Curiosity finally overcame inertia and I decided to take a look at the words that came after those first dozen.

It was after the mention of the city’s Flood Club (which every city with three rivers running through its downtown should have) I came across this:

“We need gangs,” the novelist Kurt Vonnegut once said. Decades of research suggest he was right: In any given year, positive social connections can slash our chance of dying by roughly 50%. Without them, our risk of heart disease, depression and other ailments spike — health effects that Dr. Vivek Murthy, the nation’s former surgeon general, compares to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.

“So yes,” said Vonnegut, “I tell people to formulate a little gang. And, you know, you love each other.”

Naked bowling, the 1936 St. Patricks Day flood, and now gangs. I want to say one of these things is not like the other but really, none of these things is like anything else. I was intrigued-er.

The article went on to say many of the same things we’ve said in our ROAMcare Uplift posts, only like how a professional would write them. People need people. And it went on to detail several third spaces where people needing people gather. Exercise clubs, activity clubs, sports clubs, even a naked bowling league.

The author talked about people needing and finding their people “in gangs of music lovers, movie lovers and lovers of Non-Boring Books. They’re craft-beer lovers and Sick of Drinking Millennials, Nerdy Ladies and Explorer Chicks, Toastmasters and introverts.” Wait. Toastmasters.

Not too long ago I was at a Toastmasters district level meeting. Over the course of this meeting (and just about any Toastmaster meeting beyond one’s home club), the question was asked “why do you continue being a Toastmaster?” I’ve heard many, many long-term Toastmasters answer that question and never have I heard one say, “so I can speak better,” or “so I can become a better leader,” even though those are both in our clubs’ missions.

The most common reason members hang around Toastmasters is because we meet, and associate with, and enjoy the company of others we’d never otherwise spend time with. My personal home club has members who are in finance, engineering, medical research, and restaurant management. They are self-employed, unemployed, semi-employed. They are from figuratively around the block and literally from around the world. There is a tutor, a screenwriter, an author, an investment broker, and one of me. And twice a month we get together and talk about everything but what we do.

We found what Vonnegut said we should look for. Our gang. A gang where we love each other and love being with each other for a half dozen hours a month. Gang ho!