Degrees of Fairness

I can remember as a kid standing on the boardwalk in Coney Island with my entire family and we had all gotten "frozen custard" cones. Everyone had the same cones with their favorite flavor, mine was banana, yet to my selfish child's eye mine seemed the smallest. All I could think was that it wasn't "fair". Why should I have to get the smallest one? Poor me.

All through my life I have heard people, including myself say that certain things which didn't go our way weren't fair. When the tax bill would come in and the majority of it was for school tax even though I had no children, that wasn't fair. When the city decided to put in public water and I decided to keep my well yet I received a water bill, that wasn't fair. When my parents were forced to put me on a school bus and send me into a different neighborhood for classes, they said that wasn't fair. When the pay raise I was expecting took almost a year to process and wasn't retroactive, that wasn't fair.

This was a terrible day for a lot of people. Today I saw something that was truly unfair. It didn't affect me directly but I knew it wasn't right; it was downright unjust. The funeral we had today was for a 35 year old man who was killed in the prime of his life when his automobile was struck by a dump truck. He had been out of state with his wife, three small children and his in-laws on vacation. He and his father in law took one morning and went fishing by themselves. On the way back to the motel that they were staying in, this truck T-Boned their car killing the 35 year old driver and severely injuring his father in law.

Now you tell me. Was it fair that this happened? No. Was it fair that the father in law had to sit there pinned in the car watching his son in law dieing before his eyes? No. Was it fair that his wife became a widow at such a young age? No. Was it fair that these three small children lost their daddy in the blink of an eye? Hell No! Was it fair that his mother had to see him for the last time in a casket? No. But...this is life...no guarantees of fairness, no guarantees of it even being nice. However, the next time I think something is unfair I'm going to remember the blank stare of his wife as she walked to the grave site. The three children literally clinging onto their mother with tears streaming down their frightened faces and the wails of his other family and friends. Could there be anything more unfair? At this particular moment everything that I've thought wasn't fair in the past has become bullshit in comparison and I realize always was.