Member-only story
That’s not fair!
635.
There were four of us, two boys, two girls. We were noisy and obstreperous and my father, who worked very hard as a barrister (an English lawyer who’s a litigation specialist), liked the house to be quiet at the weekend, whereas we… well, we weren’t deliberately noisy. We just had a lot to say and with four of us, we had to shout. Also, only football on the TV and obviously no kind of tech because it hadn’t been invented yet. Yes, the phone was attached to the wall.
At any rate, one day we were playing loudly in the attic playroom. It was raining. My father roared up the stairs for probably the eighth time to be quiet and then said that if we couldn’t shut up, we’d have to go to our rooms.
You know what came next.
“Owww!”
“Why?”
“That’s not fair!”
“Life’s not fair!” came the roar from downstairs as it usually did.
And then for the first and last time he added: “That’s why we’re here. To make it fair.”
I’ve never forgotten it.
~~~
