2032 Expectacle

So, just living life sometimes leads us to expect certain things. Or not expect things. Or expect things to not be.

Like if you read Lee Childs' books, where the main character Jack Reacher is 6-foot-4 and 250 pounds, you wouldn't expect him to be played in a movie by Tom Cruise. Yet that's what happened. They should have expected people to stay away in droves. And they did. It was like having Terminator played by Prince.

Likewise recently I was driving along and saw a giant inflated dinosaur. My first, and justified, expectation was, "Oh, looks like a car dealer is having an offsite sale." As I got closer, I noticed something else. One of those wiggly noodle guys. You know the ones. The air blowing in from the bottom makes the huge tubular figure wiggle, bend and shake like Gumby on meth withdrawal.

The second I saw the noodle guy I thought, "Wow, not only are they having a car sale, they're doing oil changes too!"

Imagine my surprise when I found how my expectations had led me astray. Expectations are pre-meditated resentments, a friend of mine once said, perhaps to manage my expectations about where our friendship may be going.

True enough, because I resented there wasn't going to be a car sale that gave oil changes. Turns out the inflated dinosaur and noodle man had nothing to do with those things this time. They were there to promote fireworks. It was almost Independence Day.

That holiday where the various cities expect folks to follow the law and not explode fireworks in city limits or after legal hours.

Cause you know, folks that would blow tons of money on fireworks can be expected to be responsible with unenforceable rules.

America, ya gotta love it.