As a teenager, I remember looking at photos in the local newspaper of adults doing projects with their various civic clubs.

I was in the regular slew of high school clubs at the time, did the required community service and padded the resum/ for college quite nicely.

But in my mind there was a big difference between my clubs and the adult ones.

I got the chance to see things in reverse Tuesday morning.

Though I don&8217;t yet have the pin, I&8217;ve been a member of the local Kiwanis chapter for a few weeks now. I&8217;m apparently member enough to be eligible for one of the weekly responsibilities in the club &8212; visiting Key Clubs at local high schools.

Kiwanis and Key Club are something like sister clubs. (I&8217;m new, I don&8217;t know all the terminology yet.) Each week Key Club members from Cathedral, Trinity and ACCS attend our meetings. They haul along with them an oversized key. The key clubbers get to draw a name from the Kiwanis membership attendance list, and that person in turn visits the school&8217;s Key Club to return the key.

It&8217;s an effective cycle aimed at linking the adults with the teens and forming some relationships.

I got the blue ACCS key.

In recent history the school hasn&8217;t had an effective Key Club, sponsor Sandra Eidt said. Key Club was the club to join to say you were in a club, but the group never did much.

Eidt and a small group are trying to revitalize things this year.

Tuesday&8217;s meeting was only their fourth, yet they have more projects going on than I can keep up with. They are arranging to help elementary school children who need the extra help with reading and other school work. They are collecting old ink cartridges for the refund to raise money. They pass around care cards to encourage themselves and others to do a good deed. And they want to help out at balloon race.

The group of about 10 present Tuesday is interested in expanding membership, but they also want to eliminate the students who signed up but don&8217;t really give back to the club. They want the club to be more than a mention on a resum/ and a picture to hop into on yearbook photo day.

And then there is their relationship with Kiwanis. The group has a good system worked out &8212; each week someone who has been to Kiwanis takes someone who has never been. No one has to go alone, and eventually everyone will visit the adult version of the club.

But to the teens who have never visited Kiwanis, Key Club and Kiwanis are different for one main reason.

&8220;I don&8217;t want to go eat with a bunch of old people,&8221; or something to that effect, one student said.

Old people.

The Key Club members who have never been to Kiwanis were under the impression that the club was practically an old folks home.

It seems the Key Club president explained Kiwanis as a club for &8220;older people.&8221; She said she meant people older than teenagers. But others interpreted differently.

And who can blame them?

I thought the same thing in high school. Now that I&8217;m an old person and know a little more about both clubs, the clubs aren&8217;t so different.

I joined in high school because all my friends were in it, I wanted to meet new friends, I wanted to look good for college and I liked reading to kids and helping out at the Humane Society.

As an adult, I joined with a friend, hoping to make new friends and trying to look good for work. I still like reading to kids and playing with dogs (and various other community service projects).

The age gap looks much smaller from the &8220;old&8221; end, and the clubs goals are essentially the same.

The ACCS students who have been to Kiwanis assured their classmates Tuesday that we weren&8217;t old. In fact, they seemed to think we were kind of cool.

It&8217;s amazing what seeing things in reverse can do for your perception of things, old or young.

Julie Finley

is the managing editor of The Natchez Democrat. She can be reached at 601-445-3551 or

julie.finley@natchezdemocrat.com

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