The Gift of Gab – “The ability to speak easily and confidently in a way that makes people want to listen to you and believe you.”

I was at Bagderfest on Saturday. It was a great time. Plenty of beer and games among friends.

Hours into the party a fellow I didn’t know came up to me and said “I don’t know you, and I don’t mean any offense by this, but you have the Gift of Gab, you’re just a captivating speaker. Barack Obama is the best public speaker I’ve ever seen. You might be 2nd.”

Now, at this point, the guy was roughly eight beers and three bowls into the night. I asked him how he knew this since I hadn’t spoken to him once during the party. He said by the way I spoke during the games, he could tell – I was confident in my shit talking, it hit hard, but I did it in a way which pulled the teams together instead of pushed us apart.

After this strong endorsement he was insistent that I should run for some sort of public office, that I could rally the people around me and make a difference. We got to talking politics briefly and he became even more insistent once he learned that I generally lean democrat.

I’ve been told before that I’m a good public speaker, my old company knows all about that. But no one has ever told me that I should be a politician. Frankly it seems awful.

So as an adult, if you’re a gifted public speaker the way I clearly am now, what do you do to put the gift to use? My job doesn’t present much opportunity. Outside of that, I don’t know where a civilian uses this talent aside from telling stories or apparently shit talking at parties.

This post probably scares the crap out of Tom and Jeff. Imagine, five years from now they’re still working at Stortz Tools and I’m the President. Of Stortz Tools.