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A Hall of Fame for regular people?
Paul Sassone
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Updated: April 18, 2012 5:27PM
Every once in a while I’ll receive an email announcing that some group — civic, or trade, or ethnic or whatever — is holding a dinner to honor an important person.
Often the person to be honored has little if anything to do with the group. But, he or she is well-known and may cause the email recipients to attend — and buy tickets for — the event.
It’s harmless, really. And these awards dinners help fund worthy organizations.
But chances are the honorees at these dinners have been honored by someone else before, and will be honored by another someone else again. These are well-known, successful people. They are used to being honored.
What if — just for one year — all the organizations in America stopped honoring well-known, successful people and instead honored regular people?
Why honor regular people, you may ask?
Maybe regular people don’t deserve to be honored. In fact, a recent survey I read stated that the average worker wastes two hours out of every eight-hour work day. Maybe that’s right. Maybe it isn’t.
A study I haven’t seen though is about how many workers go into hock, or get a second job to send their kids to college. And I’d like to see another survey about how much time a mail carrier wastes when it’s 94 degrees out and it’s catalog day, or how much time a waitress wastes during the dinner rush.
The thing is, people goof off at work and people work hard at work. Work is performed by human beings and human beings do all kinds of things, whether they’re at work or not.
Most people — I am convinced — do the best they can. They work hard and worry simultaneously. They call that multitasking.
The vast majority do their jobs in anonymity and with calamity only one serious illness away.
There is no dinner to honor them. There is no Sales Clerk Hall of Fame.
So, perhaps it might be a good idea, just once, for a civic group to honor an ordinary person. There would be plenty to honor, I bet. Just leading an ordinary decent life is extraordinary, particularly in these economic times. I have a hunch that it wouldn’t be just the person honored who would be moved by such an occasion. Those who give also receive.
This probably isn’t going to happen, though. There would be a financial risk. And whoever heard of a Hall of Fame for Regular People?
For one thing, how would members of the hall of fame be selected?
There would be way too many candidates.
