No one said life is fair

Life can be so unfair. You’re the better student, but someone else is picked as the star pupil. Your older brother or sister is allowed to stay up later than you are. The last of your favorite cereal just vanished.

“It’s not fair!” you whine to mom.

“No one said life is fair, honey,” is her standard response.

Welcome to the world, honey. You can whine and throw a tantrum, but there’s nothing mom can—or will—do to fix things to your liking. That’s not to say, though, that some won’t try, as in these bona fide examples torn from the headlines ...

• Some super-genius banned the game of tag from an elementary school’s playground because being tagged “it” could be damaging to a child’s self-esteem.
•  A school district suggested that purple is a friendlier color than red for marking papers.
•  Another district suggested replacing the term “failure” with “delayed success.”

Oh, please. Life is not fair, and kids--and some adults, too--need to learn this important lesson.

And guess what? Just because you grabbed the short stick this time doesn’t mean that you won’t grab the brass ring next time.