Pray for what?

There seems to be a peculiar social contract that exists in shul. Let's say, for example, that you're the tenth guy who comes in. Relatively normal, right? And let's say that there's no chiyuv either. Unfortunately that's not as normal as we would like it to be, but in this case, let's say that's what happens. Moving along further, let's say that there's no one at the amud when you walk in, and even more than that, there's no one interested in going to the amud. The curious social contract I referred to above (look up if you don't remember my mentioning it [not there, there!] {that's better}) was that the tenth man is for some reason expected to be the one who leads the congregation in prayer. Tonight this scenario played out three times, except that only I was the actual tenth man. On the third time we hit a charm, but if not for him?

Let us more closely examine the phenomenon at hand. First of all, the reason I declined the podium was because I had done it last night; in point of fact I lead Maariv, so I don't think that I let anyone down at all here. But still, the curious thing is that of nine other people, I was the one being pressured to daven. All right, so maybe four are incapable, but the others? One was learning, which is fine, but hey, I wanted to learn Rambam too. Is my Rambam any less than what he was perusing? And another was telling me to go, even though he is of course fully capable of doing so himself. Why should I go instead of him? Because he's thirty years older than me? Ridiculous.

In the end it comes down to people simply not wanting to do it, which makes sense, because I also don't want to do it. But why should I do it and they not? Is it because I don't have a gartel? Or perhaps because I would know what I'm doing? It's not even like it can be taken as a compliment, because believe you me, the first barely-literate thirteen year old that walks in there will be feted something fierce if he agrees to descend before the congregation. Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous.