Life is not fair...Surprise!

Fairness: marked by impartiality and honesty : free from self-interest, prejudice or favoritism 

My parents raised me to believe the world is a fair place. I only realized this when I was an adult. That was one of the worst things they could have done to me. Cruel and unusual punishment. They did this in many ways, but let me give you three of the more humorous examples:

1. After I was married, I and my sister and my brother would get Christmas gifts - let's say worth $100 each. However my gift only cost $92. 57, my sister's cost $100.10 and my brother's cost $108.83. My sister and I would each get an envelope to make up the difference - my envelope contained $16.26 and my sister's envelope contained $8.73. It all had to be fair. This probably happened when we were younger in a different way, as we usually got similar gifts or gifts made by my mother. 

2. When my sister and I (who both live far away from our parents) call our mother, she can talk for an hour or more, full of news and opinions and chatty, usually cheerful talk. However, when she calls us, we are certain that she has a little black book wherein she records the number of minutes she has talked to the other child. We both have noticed after a few minutes of catch up news, she gets very antsy, and is full of "well, I am sure you are busy, I should let you go." "No, Mom, I am fine, not busy at all." "Well, I am sure you are about to make supper." "No, Mom, we already ate, dishes are done. I am just relaxing." "Well, I better let you go..." and we finally let her go, and compare notes later to see how many minutes we each got that week, and it is usually always the same. 

3. I once got a birthday card that said, "you are the best child...blah, blah, blah." However, my mother crossed that out and put in a little arrow and the words, "one of the best children". She wanted the card to be fair to all of her children and not favor one over the other. 

My father's life was not fair - due to his parents' inaction against an abusive teacher, my father did not get past the fifth grade, even though he was considered the brightest boy in the class. He was the oldest boy in a family of 13 children during the depression. Food and shelter was limited, and my father still eats very fast out of habit. He worked 13 years for a horrible construction company before getting the courage to change to a company that appreciated his loyalty. He complains often that life was not fair to him. 

My mother's life was not fair. She was also a very bright student, but her parents would not let her go to high school, even though the principal of her school begged with her parents. As the youngest of 11 children, she was loved and protected from how cruel the world could be. They, loving grandparents though they were to me, did not see any need for my mother to have any higher learning - she was after all only going to get married and have children. Even though she could have obtained her GED later, she said it would not be fair to our dad if she had high school education and he did not. 

I was their oldest child, 5 years older than my sister and 12 years older than my brother. We were the foster family for numerous babies, toddlers and small boys as well, and with 81 first cousins on both sides, and many neighbor children, our yard was always busy. My mother was an excellent cook, and was able to make delicious meals out of almost nothing. I did not know that we were working poor until I was 12 years old. My father knew that I needed shoes for school as I had outgrown my last pair. He took me to Lipsetts Family Footware in August 1967. I saw a pair of black shoes for $12 - remember this was 1967 - which I knew would be stylish for eighth grade. My father asked me if those were really the shoes that I wanted. He asked me in such a way that I had a twelve year old epiphany: Those $12 would really be a stretch for my father's limited budget. I told him I would look around a little. In the backroom of the store was a sale table. On that table was a pair of white nurses' shoes for $4. They fit me perfectly, and I persuaded my dad that those were really the shoes I wanted. I wore them for the whole eighth grade with pride if with no style at all. Not fair? To whom?

I was born with a congenital heart defect. I had an aunt (my mother's sister) who died at age 19 with very similar symptoms. The doctor who did my open heart surgery when I was 18 told me that I would have been dead in 6 months, just about the time of my 19th birthday. Now I have a plastic piece in my aorta that allowed me at 21 to be more athletic than I was at age 16 - as a child I was always picked last for baseball, my favorite, as I could not run fast at all. I grew up not knowing why life was not fair and why I could not compete properly in track and field which I loved. As I grew up and began to have a larger world view, I often wondered why life was not as fair as my parents thought it should be.

This sense of instilled fairness is both a blessing and a curse. It means that I am constantly disappointed when other people treat me in a way that is good only for their own agenda and I often take it personally. It means that I work my butt off to try to make things fair for others, whether its the victims of crime I work with everyday, or my children who struggle with life at times, or my grandchildren, some of whom started life with a strike already against them. or the at-risk children in Malawi and Zambia. Sometimes I get too involved with trying to make things fair. It means that I fight for what is right, and say it out loud, often to the embarrassment of my family. It means that I often don't get "political" office nuances because I take everything at face value. I say what I mean, mean what I say and expect the same realness from others. 

So, at 58, my balloon has finally burst and I am trying to listen to a friend who has told me to write on my hand, my computer, on post-it notes all over "Life is not fair." I think it is supposed to help me to relax when things do not go the way I think they should. I think I will always have a sense of fairness stronger than most, but hopefully I am consciously aware of this fault of mine, and give myself and others a little more slack. 

What do you think?