Sticking up for the underdog

Although she never hesitated to inform us that life isn't fair, I think in her heart of hearts my mom is dedicated to Making Things Fair. When we had foster siblings, everyone got the same number of toys at Christmas, the same video renting and library book privileges, the same expectations of behavior (besides being a champion of Making Things Fair, my mother above all raised us to and expected us to Act Right). Bigger kids were never permitted to pick on smaller ones, beyond a harmless level of teasing.

My parents' house came with an old-fashioned gas light on a pole in the backyard. The gas light was already out of commission by the time they moved in, but the lamp and post remained. One year a basketball went astray and busted out one of the light's glass panels, and before long a small brown sparrow built a nest inside the lamp. The sparrow laid eggs, the eggs hatched, and then Mom discovered one afternoon that a blue jay had come along and thrown all the baby sparrows out of the nest. She got a towel and put all the babies back. The mother sparrow returned to tend the babies, but the blue jay came back, too, and tossed the babies out of the nest again.

This time, Mom was not messing around. The blue jay was violating three of the most major rules of the house:  Make Things Fair, Act Right, and Pick On Someone Your Own Size. The baby sparrows went back into the nest, and then Mom taped pieces of cardboard around the lamp to create a box that enclosed all but a tiny space in the front, large enough for a mama sparrow to fly through, but much too small for a blue jay. She used the most convenient cardboard she had -- a cut-up, bright purple Luvs diaper box--and secured the whole thing with pale yellow duct tape. When it's time to defend the underdog (or underbird), who the hell cares what the neighbors think?