The little bit of stuff for seniors around here is to help with problems only, no seniors center for fun or socializing, never have had one as far as I know, I guess because this is a university town? Anyway, that kind of stuff sounds really fun; but around here since there is no seniors center, you have to already know people to get together for something like that. In other words, you kind of have to already be a member of a group or club if you want to belong to one, like the old saying, you can't get there from here, you have to be born there, ha ha.
Every so often over the years a bookclub will get started and I've belonged to a few but it seemed like no one was friendly, just trying to talk over the top of each other, showing off how well they understood the book; so not fun. A few years back, I was thinking about trying to start my own face-to-face bookclub, so I did a poll on a couple of other websites, asking people that were in f2f bookclubs how theirs were run, how long they had lasted, any conflicts or feuds, etc. I got a lot of responses back, ranging from really businesslike-run ones that didn't allow any talk at all about anything other than the book to easy-going ones where they only talked about the book for the first 5 minutes and then spent the rest of the evening happily snacking and chatting. Anyway, of the ones that had lasted with little or no conflict, you know what they all had in common? Most or all (almost always all) of the members were already friends before they even decided to start the club.
And Covid seemed to permanently put an end to most of the social stuff at a lot of the churches around here. I think maybe the intent originally was to start stuff up again after the lockdown but the wind seems to have been knocked out of everyone's sails and nobody's got the heart to start socializing again. I really think that in most of this country, socializing and having friends is going to become more and more a thing of the past. Hope I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
