Fair and Not Fair

The Cheshire keeps a ledger. It's a big book with numbers in it, up on his beam, and he writes in it when he notices things.

I asked if I could keep one too. He said yes, but mine doesn't have to have numbers in. Mine just has two columns.

FAIR and NOT FAIR.

I've been filling it in for a while. The Cheshire says a ledger is only useful if you read it out loud, so here it is. Out loud.

Not fair: the rain only on some people

When it rains, some people have umbrellas and some don't.

That's not anybody's fault. Rain is rain.

But then I saw that some people have a whole roof over the bus stop, and some bus stops have no roof at all. And the bus stops with no roof are mostly in the places where people look the most tired.

The Cheshire said that's not the rain's fault. That's the roof's fault. Somebody decides where the roofs go.

So I put it in NOT FAIR. Not the rain. The roofs.

Fair: the moon

The moon is the same for everybody.

It doesn't matter if you've got three cars or no car. It doesn't matter if your house is big or small. You look up and there it is, the same moon, the same size, for free.

I asked the Joker if anyone owns the moon. He said lots of people have tried.

I asked if it worked. He said no.

FAIR. Definitely fair. The moon is the fairest thing I know.

Not fair: the quiet

Some people have quiet and some people don't.

The man with the big garden has quiet. The lady in the flat over the shop, on the busy road, has no quiet at all. There are lorries all night, she said. And the shop plays music.

The Cheshire said that quiet costs money now. He said rich people buy quiet and everybody else gets the noise for free.

I don't think quiet should cost money. Quiet is just when nothing's happening. How can nothing cost money?

NOT FAIR. I underlined it twice.

Fair: sharing the last biscuit

There was one biscuit left. The Joker was hungry and I was hungry.

He broke it in half. One half was a bit bigger. He gave me the bigger half.

I said that wasn't fair to him. He said, fair isn't always the same size. Sometimes fair is giving the bigger half to the one who's smaller.

I had to think about that one. Then I put it in FAIR, but with a little star next to it, because it's a special kind of fair.

Not fair: being told to hurry when there's no fire

Grown-ups are always being told to hurry.

Last chance! Ends tonight! Only three left! The shops say it. The phones say it. Even the emails say it.

But there's never a fire. Nobody's in danger. It's just a sale on shoes.

The Joker says making people hurry is a trick. If you hurry, you don't have time to think, and if you don't have time to think, you buy the shoes.

I think people should only be told to hurry when there's a real reason. Like a fire. Or ice cream melting.

NOT FAIR.

Fair: the library

You can go in the library and take a book home, and you don't have to pay.

Not even a little bit. Not even for now.

And you can sit in the library as long as you like, and it's warm, and nobody tells you to buy something or leave.

I asked the Cheshire how the library is allowed to do that, when everything else costs money. He said a lot of people decided a long time ago that some things should belong to everyone.

I think that was the best decision anybody ever made.

FAIR. With three stars.

Not fair: the score on people

There's a man who drives a taxi. When you get out, the phone asks you to give him stars.

If he gets too few stars, he might not be allowed to drive anymore.

But maybe the person who gave him a few stars was just in a bad mood. Maybe it rained. Maybe the traffic was bad. That's not the man's fault.

I asked the Joker if anybody gives the phone stars. He laughed and said, no. Funny, isn't it?

I don't think people should be marked with stars like homework. People aren't homework.

NOT FAIR.

Fair: everyone has a breath

This is my favourite one.

The House says that everybody's worth started with their very first breath. Not when they got clever. Not when they got rich. Not when they got stars. Just: breath.

And everybody gets a first breath. The man with three cars. The lady over the shop. The taxi driver. Me. You.

Nobody had to earn it. Nobody can buy a bigger one. Nobody can take it away.

So that means, underneath all the NOT FAIR things, there's one thing that's completely fair, and it's the biggest thing of all.

I put it at the very top of the FAIR column, in my best writing.

Not fair: the tired people at the end of the day

At the end of the day, on the train home, some people are so tired they fall asleep standing up.

And then they get home and they still have to cook and wash and sort things out. And then they go to bed and do it all again.

But some other people aren't tired like that, because other people do the cooking and the washing and the sorting for them.

The Cheshire said there's a lot of work in the world that nobody counts and nobody pays for, and it mostly gets done by the most tired people.

I said someone should count it. He said that's what his ledger's for.

NOT FAIR. But at least someone's counting now.

Fair: holding hands crossing the road

When we cross the road, the Joker always holds my hand.

Even though I'm quite big now. Even though I know to look both ways.

I asked him why. He said, because the road is big and you're small, and the grown-up's job is to hold the small one's hand.

I think that should be the rule for everything. Whenever something's big and somebody's small, a grown-up should hold their hand.

Not just roads. Bills, and hospitals, and the big buildings where they make you wait.

FAIR. And it should be fairer, with more hands.

What to do with the ledger

When I showed the Cheshire my ledger, he read it very slowly.

He said there were more things in NOT FAIR than in FAIR.

I said yes. I was a bit sad about that.

He said, that's what ledgers are for. You can't fix a thing until somebody writes it down.

Then I asked the Joker what we do now. He said, you start with the smallest one you can do something about.

So I looked at my ledger, and I found one.

The biscuit one. You can always give the bigger half to the one who's smaller. Anybody can do that, today, without asking anyone. It doesn't cost anything except half a biscuit.

So that's what I'm going to do. And the Joker said he would too.

And maybe, if enough people do the biscuit one, we can start on the roofs.

The last line in the ledger

At the bottom of the last page, the Cheshire let me write one more line. He said it could be anything.

So I wrote:

FAIR: you reading this, all the way to the end.

Because you did. And now you've seen my ledger, and it isn't only mine anymore.

You can keep one too. Two columns. FAIR and NOT FAIR.

Read it out loud sometimes. That's the rule.