ECC: members only
Kristin G.
ed/op editor
Being summertime, I prefer to ride my bike the mere half-mile to ECC. Hot and sweaty, I dismount my partly broken bicycle and readjust my sunglasses. Now, for the hard part of this whole ordeal-getting inside. You see, I am not a member.
Not a member. Those words I was forced to repeat multiple times when I went to the pool at ECC with my friends who, to my dismay, belonged there.
As I approach the front booth of the Country Club pool, I swear there are secret agents aligned on the other side of the walls. The young workers look at me, expecting to verify my membership.
Things get awkward as I have to call my friend to let me in. I get her voicemail three times.
Timidly, I tell one of the attendants that I can’t get a hold of her. The look on her face seems to say, “Oh, so you’re one of those.”
Nevertheless, she sends me through the gate to have my friend “submit” me.
For the longest time, I had an awestruck “outsider idea” of what ECC was like for its members. My mind would wander to red carpets, VIP parties, or even personal assistants.
For all I knew, my fantasized idea about ECC was true. And the main reason I thought this way was because every time I walked through those white doors I became selfconscious, brutally aware of my surroundings, and how I didn’t seem to fit in.
I finally spot my friend. She groans in exasperation and slowly gets out of her lounge chair to make her way to the front booth.
I breathe a sigh of relief.
It’s not hard to find a place in Edina where you don’t belong. Heck, I was born and raised here, and I still can feel like I don’t really fit in, as I am sure a lot of my peers do. It’s places like ECC that will always cause a big neon flashing sign to go off in my head saying, “You don’t belong!” and it is for that reason of feeling excluded, above many others, that I will never call myself a member.