The World's Common Tater

A few years ago I was asked to be a part of a skit at our professional development day. It was a skit about making announcements over the intercom at the library. My job was to continue to do really bad, boring announcements. I’m not sure anyone realized that I didn’t really need to act. I’m really bad at making announcements. I always get other people to make the announcements for me. Luckily, at both of the places I’ve worked I’ve had people who were willing it for me and who are also good at it. Anyway, that was the beginning of me being on stage at PDD.

The next year I was asked to take over as emcee for the day. I was given a basic script to introduce the various parts of the day and tasked to “Tater it up.” So, I went into the next professional development day feeling like I was going to throw up. I’m not really a natural when it comes to speaking in front of a crowd. I did it. I must have done a decent job. People seemed to like me. The CEO seemed to like me, especially when I ended the day telling the staff that we had a gift for them because “we didn’t want them to go away empty-handed, we just wanted them to go away”. I suddenly went from the invisible guy who used to work in the jail to the guy everyone knew. I was friended on Facebook by at least one person who didn’t know me but wanted to connect because of my role as emcee. I hate to admit it, but it felt good. I was asked to return for a second year as emcee. No one seemed to hate it. I was once again a “star”. I enjoyed being the talent. I enjoyed the spotlight. But, alas, all thing must come to an end.

Our CEO retired and she was the one who first suggested they use me in the skit because she saw me present at conference and thought I was funny. I’m sure she was the person behind me being the emcee in the following years. We had a new CEO and the admin people decided to take the spotlight back. I was just a regular person last year who caused problems by sitting with my old branch instead of my current branch. I was no longer a star. I was just a normal person in the audience(well, a person. I’ve never been accused of being normal). The nest professional development day is on the horizon and I have once again not been invited to reprise my role as emcee. It seems my time in the spotlight is over. I will not be on stage this year. I will be sitting in the audience judging the person who is in my spot. I will probably sit at the “wrong” table again and people will be mad at me.

I miss the spotlight and I’m sure my fans miss me.