I was told I'd be taller

When I was in Kindergarten I was the "tallest girl." Labels and categories are very, very important to a kindergartner. When you don't really understand life yet, everything is black and white, good guy and bad guy, Ken and Barbie, right and wrong. Anyone who has ever been around a kindergarten-age child will tell you there is no such thing as subtlety, sarcasm or gray areas for this age group.
In the hierarchy of Kindergarten there was the oldest, the youngest, the tallest, the shortest, the loudest, the quietest, etc. Being the tallest girl was a BIG DEAL, pretty much VIP-level stuff.
It became even a bigger deal at our Kindergarten graduation in the spring of 1987. My hair was freshly crimped, my gray and neon green sweater dress was clean and my cable-knit tights were not yet bunching around my knees. I had my pink, construction paper graduation cap with the "Class of 2000" tassel (this is also when it first occurred to me that I would graduate in 2000, another REALLY BIG DEAL since obviously I'd attend high school on the moon and drive there in my flying car--natch!). As our class stood up to sing "Down By the Bay," I scanned the crowd for my parents and grandparents. I found my grandpa videotaping me with his giant (and super modern) camcorder. As soon as the pomp and circumstance had died down my grandparents rushed over with flowers to congratulate my stellar achievements. "You're the tallest girl!" my grandma gushed. I humbly acknowledged this fact. "She'll grow up to be a basketball player," my grandpa exclaimed, "lots of colleges will want her!" "Or a model!" my grandma predicted. Yes, yes, the world was my oyster, I'd be a basketball playing model, accepting positions at top colleges on the moon. But soon the glory faded and by the time the leaves began to change and I became a card-carrying first grader--to my horror I discovered I no longer wore the coveted "tallest girl" crown. How could this be? I was somewhere in the middle. I was mediocre. No longer special. This was bullshit! Not only was this bullshit, this was only the first of many times I was told I'd be something that I didn't turn out to be.
Looking back now, with all the fluff my head was filled with by family members, I should be a 6 foot blonde model, who went to college on an athletic scholarship and eventually cure cancer. They failed to tell me that blonde hair turns mousy, skinny bodies turn curvy, school gets harder and just because you get good grades, doesn't mean you're smart.
I didn't go to high school on the moon, I was a completely inept at basketball and never again did I don the crown of tallest girl. If 6 year old me saw adult me's statistics on paper, she would have dubbed me a complete failure. But then again 6 year olds don't appreciate gray areas and life is pretty much a total gray area.