Fairness

When I was pretty young, maybe around that nebulous area from 3rd to 5th grade, my old church had a talent contest. No categories, no rules except, of course, for basic decency... any child who wanted to show up was welcome to come up on stage and do something for the crowd. Prizes were given out. They were pretty dinky prizes, of course, but I wanted one badly.

I was a piano player, and a good one, too. I selected a challenging piece that I loved, something beautiful, and I learned it by heart. I played it over and over. I worked through the rough spots over and over. I mastered that piece and learned to play it with emphasis.

There was another girl in my neighborhood who also played piano. She was a born genius. She was incredibly gifted. She taught herself how to play from a very young age. When she entered the competition, I knew one of the prizes would be hers. On the day of the competition, she played a song that she had written herself.

At my turn, I sat up there feeling nervous as anything, but I made a good start and carried it through brilliantly. I didn't miss a single note. I remembered my emphasis. I picked a darn good song and I played it well. I left the bench knowing that I had done as well as I could have hoped for. As I heard the others, mostly singers, do their piece one by one, I knew I had done well enough for a coveted prize. Most of the singers flubbed their parts. Few were on tune. Some simply got stage fright and refused to perform at all.

Then the prizes were given out. My neighbor got one, of course. The other five or six prizes were handed out among the singers, several of whom had made huge mistakes in their parts. After the show, I asked, politely and curiously, why my piece had not been good enough to merit a prize. I was not being rude or demanding. I was confounded, and I was seeking understanding.

"Oh, you were definitely good enough! But we got together and decided that since there were only two piano players, it wasn't fair to give both of them prizes. There were a lot more singers, so we gave the rest of the prizes among them. It was only fair."

This was my first experience with the term "fair" as it is now used in political discussion, and I learned a great deal. I learned that everything I was taught in inspirational movies and stories did not count. I learned that it didn't matter how much I dreamed, how long I practiced, how hard I tried, or how well I did. A society built on "fairness" could simply decide to deny me anything I earned for relatively arbitrary reasons.

Now I could look back at those cheap silly prizes - my neighbor got a simple curly drinking straw - and laugh that it ever meant so much to me. Truthfully, it didn't matter if the prize was a piece of paper, or simply a verbal "well done". From that day on, I never, ever regarded the argument "it's only fair" with anything but hostile suspicion. And to this day, the easiest way to turn me off to a proposed law or regulation is to use the phrase...

"It's only fair."