What does teaching kids fairness have to do with HPV?

The answer? Well, that life’s not fair. Women share a far greater burden for sexual misadventure, as my recent dubious smear result shows. Of all the potential culprits, all denied having it – despite there being NO test for HPV in men. Chances are it’s nothing, or it will get better on its own. But I might get cancer. Someone’s to blame, but noone’s willing to pick up the flack, and whoever it is, well they’ll keep on passing it on, unknowing, uncaring, with no threat to themselves.

Life’s not fair.

I’ve been thinking a lot about fairness lately. I got made redundant. That wasn’t fair. I applied for lot of jobs I can do standing on my head. I might not stand a look in with lots of them because of things like nepotism, that aren’t fair but are very real.

It’s easy to get discouraged. In fact, I’d even recommend it. Become immune. Develop a thick skin. Stop complaining. Life isn’t fair and the sooner you get used to it, the sooner it will get better. Because in this life, you make your own luck, or at least that’s what people who have a lot of it (or put another way, people with bigger advantages- those who hold all the cards) will tell you. For them, life’s what you make of it, so buck up and get on with it. No one likes a misery guts, so pull yourself together.

But what if you’ve dusted yourself down, only to get another knock back and you’re finding it hard to get back on your feet? What if you’ve been dealt a shit hand, then what? Well, suck it up, because moping around isn’t going to make it any better. Complain to a man about the fact you are now living with the threat of cervical cancer, and no amount of slut shaming in the world will compare to what’s going on in his head, despite the fact that he may have have 12 times as many sexual partners as you.

Take action against unfairness, and it may count against you in the future, because then you’re a complainer, so no one wants to touch you with a bargepole.

Despite the fact that you may have been bullied, ostracised; that your mental health has taken a turn for the worse. But raising a grievance, taking leave on stress – that won’t help either. Not in the long run. It will merely get you red carded. Why were you ostracised? Because you were flattered into sleeping with someone, someone with more power than you, someone who just left to share dividends and a hero’s send off, despite people agreeing in private that he was a bit of a tosser, while you, ignominiously took the walk of shame to gather your possessions as your ex-colleagues, wide eyed with hangover, looked on in discomfort; although I don’t doubt some looked on in triumph.

There is no test for HPV in men. Someone is to blame, but the world will tell me its me. I should have kept my knickers on. But I didn’t know he was a tosser. So life’s not fair.

I’m obviously not going to use this example to explain to my kids that life’s not fair. Perhaps I’m scared they will judge me. Lord knows, plenty do.

But given Jonah is black and white about fairness, and usually responds to acts of unfairness with a tantrum, perhaps it will do him good to learn nice and early, that life just isn’t fair, to get him prepared. Except that it won’t. He’ll only ever see in black and white, so the shades of grey that constitute fairness for individuals and organisations, fairness in love and in war can never be interpreted by him.

But the fact that he’s seen me sobbing my heart out time and time again over things about which I have no control, about which helplessness and frustration make me pathetic, might help abate the sort of wide eyed trust of being brought up by even handed parents, only to realise, later on that he’s been duped by society.

Unless you hold all the cards in life, you’re never going to win, and this is something that Jonah is very good at understanding. Less so is that the only way to deal with losing is to keep poker faced, to never let anyone know your hand, otherwise you just lose the game harder and faster and with more humiliation.