I've been thinking about tribes, and how we all belong to them, and how sometimes the most important part of membership is that others not be members. Our neighborhood is like that, governed by a clique of sour old women and sprinkled with people who have country club written all over their well-tanned faces, and there sits our family feeling small and out of place. We've decided we don't like our neighborhood one bit, not its self-important association meetings nor its overindulged teenagers nor the instinct of its residents to be so, well, unneighborly.

Which is strange, because I've only recently decided to keep a ridiculous-looking flagpole in our front yard because a friend pointed out that I can fly a "Don't Tread On Me" flag. That's how tribal thinking works: I don't want to be in their mean-spirited little tribe, yet I resent not being welcomed.

I've resigned from some tribes in the past couple of years. First I left the Republicans, which, let's face it, was never going to work out anyway. I had only been a member of their tribe because the alternatives were so laughable, but I realized one evening, as I sat through an excruciatingly insipid speech by a senior member of the Bush Administration, that sometimes being in a tribe carries a moral connotation, in the sense that we lend our sanction to those with whom which we choose to associate. If this was the best my tribe had to offer, I decided, then I shall be finished with them.

Actually, it was more visceral than that -- I simply couldn't stomach the thought of anyone believing that I throw myself in with the likes of that woman whose mouth seemed to spew banalities and half-truths so effortlessly. The falling out had begun years before, and perhaps it's unfair to lay it entirely at her feet; I'd interacted with enough Republicans in Washington, D.C. to realize that they have no advantage over their opponents in character, principle, honor, or even economic common sense.

And now they race headlong into fall elections looking every bit as venal and arrogant as did the Democrats in the early 1990's, and all I can think is what I thought in 1994: good riddance.

Then there is the N.R.A., which I had joined in an ill-considered moment of enthusiasm following a handgun course at their national headquarters, an action I've never quite understood, because the course itself was largely useless and the majority of instructors profoundly taken with their own skill and cleverness. But I joined nonetheless, and thereby became entitled to a bumper sticker, a magazine, and approximately one million shrill mail solicitations.

They called me a couple of months ago, to ask how I would feel if the U.N. took away my guns. This is like asking someone in Michigan if he's worried about the Canadians invading.

I understand why they do this: the fundraising statistics suggest that, as a member, I am likely to get so riled by the thought of blue-helmeted, dark-skinned people parachuting, Red Dawn-like, onto the plains to seize my Smith & Wesson that I will write a check to help cover Wayne LaPierre's considerable salary. Sadly for the young lady on the other end of the line, however, statistics are not always reliable predictors of individual behavior, which in my case entailed laughing and saying, "No really, who is this? Aunt Debbie, is that you?"

Once we established that the poor child was in fact calling on behalf of the National Rifle Association, I explained to her that I've never been troubled by the whole black helicopters coming to take over America thing. She was prepared with a sophisticated rebuttal, but unfortunately we were cut off when I put the phone back in its cradle.

I'm still in the tribe of people who believe a well-armed populace is the only ultimately effective form of congressional term limit. But I am no longer in the N.R.A. tribe. I mean, really. The U.N.? Has anyone, anywhere, ever been disarmed by these people? The U.N. couldn't break up a slap fight at a Josh Groban concert, and yet the leaders of my former tribe decide to sic their summer interns on the rest of us with that canard. Again, to be a member of the tribe is to lend its leaders sanction, and up with this crap a thinking man cannot put.

There are other tribes I've drifted from, mostly cliques, tribes within tribes, circles of friends or acquaintances that I've let myself float away from, which is as easy as letting go. Some of these I regret, others not.

I wonder if something in me is broken, if there is a gene that predisposes us to tribal affiliations but which is bent over backward in my blood, so that I recoil from groups. I suppose there is no point in wondering. In the end there are only the two tribes that matter to me: the scattered tribe of simpatico people, those friends you can travel with in silence and know that it is okay, the ones who understand what funny is and is not, the ones you know in the first moments of meeting, but who are so rare and so rarely in the same place; and most important, my tribe of five, huddled together on our little patch of splendor in the Kansas plains. When I think about my family sprawled about me in our big bed on a Saturday morning, wallowing and giggling and thinking about pancakes for breakfast, I can't understand why anyone would give a fig for the rest of it.

Which is more proof, as if any of us needed it, that I'm not cut out to be a member in the other tribes. And that's okay by me.