Expectations

Oh, life is full of disappointments, anywhere you care to look for them.  The greater the expectation, the more likely the disappointment to follow.  Still, I was surprised to see this warning in my local K-Mart.

I've decided not to pursue it further:  I have no need to seek additional disappointments in my life.  I'll never know why this particular magazine moved an anonymous shopper to post a sad little warning.

I am reminded of the six-word Hemingway novel--

For sale:  baby shoes, never worn.

I find this real-life six-word story equally compelling.  Is this a person disappointed in love, or perhaps one ruing the thousands spent on a less than perfect day?  Maybe a person of limited means frustrated by an inability to fund a dream wedding?  So many ways to disappoint.  I am happier with the mystery.

My own baby granddaughter wears no shoes.  Her fat little feet don't hold her up yet, although they will soon.  She hasn't learned to plant them flat and wide.  She does a hundred squats a day, hauling herself up on with whatever she can find, and plopping down again on her diaper-padded bottom.  She learned to climb up one stair this weekend, and found it both surprising and terrifying.  It's only one step, but there she was, out on a ledge, not knowing what to do next.

I feel like that sometimes, too.