Why do I continue to be surprised?

I mean, it's not like it's ever happened before. Something I was looking forward to got screwed up through no fault of my own. I shouldn't have gotten so excited.
Today we went to the senior center. I was completely prepared to read poetry to some of the residents, and had been working on choosing poems that I thought they'd like for two weeks, and even reading most of them out loud to myself to prepare. I was really hyped about it, because I've been wanting to get the nerve up to do something for the community, and bothered that I hadn't really done anything useful yet. The woman I spoke with seemed really excited about it, and said that the residents would love it.
Apparently they didn't love it as much as she thought. No one showed up. I ended up going to watch Edison do magic tricks, and pretending that I didn't want to go off and cry somewhere.
It wouldn't have been so bad if I had not wanted to do it, and was only doing it because Mom asked me. I actually wanted to help someone. I'm not really good at anything (I don't have any skills, as Napoleon Dynamite would say) and I'm not wonderful at reading aloud, but at least I like it. You have no idea how hard it is for me to get excited about being all alone, helping seniors. I usually avoid strangers like the plague.
It also wouldn't have been so bad if it weren't for Edison. He was just getting his stuff together this morning, and learning new tricks. He ended up doing a lot of repeats, and messed up on one. Guess what.
A) Everyone just laughed when he messed up, and it was no biggie. For me, everyone would just stare, and I would feel like a failure,
B) He had a whole room full of people,
C) Almost none of them were the same from the last time, so they didn't care that he'd done the tricks there.
You know what? He's got another gig in two weeks, and I can tell you for sure, he's not upstairs practicing, and he probably won't. Until the morning of the 17th, when he's going there again. But everyone will still love him, and not care that he did the same tricks, and had to set everything up right before he did it. I'll tell you something else. I'll get ready for reading again, and no one will show up. They'll all be watching Edison. That's the way it always works.
Come on, who would rather listen to some stupid, stuttering 14 (by then 15) year old read boring old Browning and Kipling when they could watch an entertaining, suave 13 year old do magic tricks?
Other than me, that is.