Groucho Marx once said that he didn’t care to belong to any club that would have him as a member.
Such humorous high standards are bound to lead to frustration for the determined but self-discriminating joiner, since the only clubs he would care to belong to would be the very ones that didn’t want him. It’s one of those Catch-22, vicious-circle kind of situations.
Of course, you have to wonder why anyone would want to belong to a club that didn’t want him as a member.
If you’ve never experienced that perverse desire for the unobtainable but are curious to know how it feels, you can ask Robert Dorman. He wants to belong to the Collinsville Recreation Club, but they won’t have him.
Dorman was a member of the club once, but he succeeded in antagonizing his fellow members to such a degree that they felt obliged to revoke his membership, which for some strange reason only made membership more appealing to Dorman. Now he wants to belong more than ever.
Back in October 2010, Dorman allegedly threatened mortal harm to a fellow member and his children and grandchildren, all because the other member had supposedly pulled Dorman’s son’s hair. Dorman’s membership was suspended the following month, and terminated in April 2011.
Believe it or not, Dorman has spent the last three years trying to get back in the club. He actually filed suit and finally had his day in Madison County Circuit Court this Tuesday.
Ironically, if Dorman had considered how much membership in the Collinsville Recreation Club meant to him before he lost it, he might have kept it – and spared a judge, a jury, and the taxpayers of Madison County a big, pointless waste of time and money.
One might wonder if anyone in the courtroom would care to belong to a club that had Dorman as a member.