Rough Justice

Henry has a brother and sister - the progeny of Scott's first marriage - whom he loves with all of his strawberry-sized infant heart. When Scott told Henry that his beloved Emma and Quinny had strep throat, Henry worked his lower lip a few times, then burst into a wail.

"This is incredible!" said Scott, gazing at Henry as if he were a lab specimen. (And truth be told, he kinda was at the beginning. But that's a story for another day.)

"Of course he's upset!" I cried, running to Henry's aid. "There was this article in the Times Magazine about babies - they have real empathy. Quick, you have to make him feel better. Tickle him. Tell him they are going to be fine. He's so sad! Tickee, tickee, tickee!!" I shouted, making Henry cry harder.

"Emma and Quinny are going to be just fine," Scott said calmly, chucking Henry under the chin. Soon, Henry was reassured and back to his happy cooing while Scott did a nose dive into the article, telling me what I had just read for myself: Not only are children less than a year old empathetic, but they have a rudimentary sense of right and wrong. So much so, in fact, that one little baby in an experiment not only punished a mean puppet by taking away his ball, but also whacked him upside the head.

None of this was news to me. Three out of the four of children in my family have a stubborn streak of justice that persists despite all evidence that life just isn't fair. The fourth child is what scientists call an "outlier" for reasons I explain below.

As the eldest of the four, things went fairly smoothly for me until my first brother Christopher arrived on the scene eighteen months after my birth. I never felt particularly competitive with him for my parents' affection, probably because they were in their early twenties and too preoccupied with grad school and playing coed volleyball to pay either one of us much attention.

But then my brother was diagnosed with a rare, stupid disease and had to be in the hospital all the time. That was our first clue that life might not share our fundamental notion of justice.

Our second clue came after Justin was born. Justin was so skinny as a toddler that my mother had to feed him milkshakes for breakfast. While Justin was enjoying a thick, creamy milkshake every morning, Christopher and I were trying to survive on powdered milk and government cheese. When we protested, my mother just said, "Life's not fair. The sooner you learn it, the better."

But our sense of justice persisted, even in the face of our parents' totally unfair treatment. For example, until age 11, I was fine with the fact that all my clothes came from one of two places, the hospital consignment shop where my grandmother volunteered or Sears. After all, my BFF Shawn also wore Toughskins and the occasional plaid leisure suit to school. But then Shawn's father got a gig working construction in Saudi Arabia and suddenly there was money for Calvin Klein jeans. Shawn became an instant celebrity and my first frenemy.

I pleaded with my mother for designer jeans. "Designer jeans are an oxymoron," she said. And, more crushingly: "I am not going to spend $36 on a pair of jeans."

"It's not fair!" I cried. "I am the only girl in the whole sixth grade with knee patches sewn inside her jeans!" My father's response was to write "Jordache" on a piece of duct tape and slap it over my back pocket.

Despite the fact that I had to earn my first pair of Jordache with 36 hours of babysitting, I still clung to the idea that life should be fair. I even became a lawyer. And despite the fact that he spent his childhood outwitting a rare disease and getting blasted with mega doses of chemotherapy and steroids, Christopher also became a lawyer, convinced that justice is out there somewhere.

Then there's Justin, whose very name means "righteous" or "just one." Things slid sharply downhill for Justin after he gained the appropriate amount of milkshake weight. Matthew, the baby, was born, and Justin fell from star-baby to lower-middle-child status.

I called Justin "Justin Martyr" after his forebear (a second century moralist who was ultimately beheaded by the Romans) because Justin never stopped his campaign for "Justice for Justin." Justin always had to sit in the very back of the station wagon over the spare tire, he never got second helpings, and he was the only one of us who had to wear glasses in elementary school. Yet he never succumbed to the idea that life wasn't fair. When things got to be too much for him, he would just pack a jelly and cheese sandwich and a spare pair of underpants in a brown sack and run away to the public library. Once there, he would beg the pretty librarian to adopt him. She would return him to our family and the cycle would continue.

Justin's sense of righteousness persists to this day. Like 99% of the world, he works in an office and like 98% of those people, he would rather be at home. But unlike everyone else, Justin actually did something about it. He complained. So now he gets to work from home when he feels like it. And when he didn't like an overbearing manager sitting next to him, he kvetched until the company relocated the manager to another cubicle farm. Now he won't work weekends because his super-hot girlfriend just moved in with him. With these accommodations, work now seems more fair to Justin.

The rest of us just shake our heads and say, "He must be one hell of a programmer."

Now Matthew, the outlier: Whether Matthew was born with an innate sense of fairness has never been tested because Matthew literally has never had a bad day. Despite the fact - or maybe because - he was the only one of us not breast-fed, Matthew has never been sick. From the time he was born, he was not permitted to cry. One little hiccup from his Cupid's bow lips and the three of us were running to his crib, elbowing one another out of the way to be the first to pick him up.

Today, Matthew is six feet tall, a natural athlete with bright green eyes and blond hair. Taking a break from graduate work in linguistics, he works nine months of the year as a teacher in a cushy private school and spends his summers in Europe. Matthew will send around emails that say things like: "Geez, guys, instead of working this quarter, they want me to go to surf camp in Malibu with a few of the seniors." Matthew is engaged to Anna, a ridiculously beautiful Spanish woman who has a Ph.D. and a family vineyard in the south of Spain. "If we ever get tired of academia," Matthew has said, "maybe we'll just make wine."

I hope that little Henry was born under the same lucky star as his Uncle Matt. Certainly, his brother and sister spoil him with affection, almost knocking each other out to get closest to him. And in his wide-eyed, innocent way, he just seems to expect it.