Life doesn’t necessarily turn out the way we expect.

When my wife was a little girl, Primary classes had different names than they have now.  The 11-year-old boys were the Guide Patrol.  Teaching that class was my first calling in the Church.  There were also larks, bluebirds, and seagulls.  Little 5-year-old Marjorie was extremely excited to be able to go into the Right Way Pilot class.  She couldn’t wait to get her own airplane.  The front of the teacher’s manual featured a picture of a stubby airplane with a little kid flying it.  The teacher even gave a rousing talk to her prospective class about how they were going to learn to be pilots.  Marjorie was an eager student.  She could see herself piloting her airplane down the steps to her basement classroom.  She imagined being able to fly home after church instead of walking.  Primary was finally going to have some substance.  She was going to learn to fly!

Disillusionment set in quickly.  Several weeks of lessons went by without a mention of flight instructions.  Every week was just the same old thing.  Margie finally asked her mother when she was going to get her airplane.

“You don’t think they’re going to give you an airplane, do you?” she said in surprise.

Margie was shocked, and hugely disappointed.  “I didn’t want a big one,” she said later.  “I just wanted a little one that fit around my body—like the one in the picture.”

She had little use for Primary after that.  It used false advertising, and wasn’t cracked up to what it purported to be.

One of Marjorie’s favorite pastimes was to play pirate over in the mill yard.  She generally played pirate and imagined by herself, but sometimes her friend JoAnn would join her.  Sunday breakfast in those days was generally cold cereal; and one day, on the box, she noticed an offer for a pirate game.  She had to have that game.

“You never liked games,” her mother told her.  “You won’t like it when you get it, and you’ll never look at it again.”

But this was a pirate game.  More than anything Margie wanted to be a pirate and to dress up in the clothes that were pictured on the box.

“I didn’t want the game,” she says.  “I wanted those clothes!”  You can imagine her disappointment when the order arrived.  It was some “paper thing” that held no interest at all.

Margie’s other ambition in those days was to be a dance hall girl.  She had seen a movie scene that featured a girl leaping onto the bar with momentum, and sliding to the end knocking drink glasses helter-skelter as she went.  “It looked so fun,” she said.  “I thought to myself, that’s what I want to be.”

No, life doesn’t always live up to expectations—most times thankfully so.