Sally has discovered that wailing “it’s not fair” leads unfailingly to Mom saying, “life isn’t fair.” She greets that pronouncement with about the same enthusiasm that I did when my dad said it to me, which is to say, not much. One day I told her, “If life were fair then Ferrari would make minivans and give me a new one every month and we’d live in a mansion with a staff of 15 to feed and bathe us before we realized we were hungry and stinky.”
Then I said, “If life were fair, we’d live in a mudhut in Africa and Dad would work in a far off-city for peanuts and Mom would be dying of AIDS (that Dad brought home from the prostitutes in that city–I didn’t say that part to my 6 year old), and Sally would beg for the opportunity to go to school, and Susan would beg for food, and Spot would be adopted by Angelina and Brad.”
Maybe life would be better for one of us, if life were fair.
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