I’ve always had lofty expectations.  I can’t really remember a time when I wasn’t looking ahead to something grander in all of the areas that truly matter in life:  wealth, station, love, power, a cool blue and silver Schwinn Roadmaster, (aka iPad 3G).  Aging has changed, but never lessened the pull and necessity I have to hold on to such things, even as I sit here intellectually aware of the inanity of it all.

There are, of course, more basal expectations that should never be discounted.  Expecting safety and security within one’s church would be one.  Fair treatment from your insurance company in a time of medical crisis would be another.  Not being taken advantage of by your bank and assorted lenders seems cool.  Common sense and decency from those around us and our elected officials, in particular, should be a given.  Michigan State beating Butler…certainly!

Yet, more and more, no matter what one’s ideological slant, expectations have become darker and dreaded and rays of hope and promises of brighter tomorrows are viewed with skepticism instead of enthusiasm.  Mistrust, distrust and befuddled sources of the too much information we receive have infected the hovering, trembling masses by invective claims that, “we’re all going to Hell!”…by clergy, of course, but now by losing politicians, Teabaggers and other terrorists.

In the twenty-five-cent-two-movie-three-cartoon-and-a-serial-JujuBees-Rootbeer Barrels-and-popcorn memory of my childhood, the ‘Good Guys’ were very clearly delineated from the ‘Bad Guys’ and we were secure in our expectation that, no matter how dire the circumstance, ‘Good’ would prevail.  We, the audience enlisted en masse and with vocal bravado as the minions of the wild west, GI or outer space protagonist without a shred of doubt as to our righteous purpose.  In the reality-based scenario of life, we seem to have lost the childhood gift of recognizing the ‘Good Guys’.  Sure, hat color is not any more a dead giveaway and Buster Crabbe is long gone, but some characteristics still fit, with statistical clarity, on one side or the other.  Politics, religion and choice of personal computing platform, (although I’ll grant the existence of many more grey areas than one would find in, say,“Commando Cody”), demand that people line up behind a mule, an elephant, a weasel or a priest, and blinder themselves to follow their leaders and their dogma.  As Americans, we have just squandered eight years of expectations by backing the evil W and his posse of rustlers, war mongers and inter-galactic money changers.  Obama is his antithesis, (granted in a half-black hat), and we should be rallying around his better nature.  Wasting the remainder of his three, (or seven), years is in no one’s best interest and will only insure that our expectations will never rise to greatness.