An ugly phrase has arisen in our household lately. It is only comprised of three words, but it has the power to make fathers snap and say stuff like, "When I was your age I had to walk to school backwards in the snow, uphill both ways while I was carrying my baby sister on my back! We were tougher back then!"

It didn't matter that when dear old dad was a youth, school was actually cancelled if one flake found its way to the ground or that he was an only child. Times were tougher back then, and he didn't complain...or at least that's what he tells his kids.

The three words that insight such distorted memories and turn parents' faces blood red are, "It's not fair!"

Children have an infinitesimally small concept of the scales of justice. By nature, they believe nearly everything parents ask them to do outside of playing is completely unfair, and the situation is at least ten times worse for each sibling that has to be factored into the equation.

Ask one child to pick a green Army man up off the kitchen floor, and that child will first claim she did not put that Army man on the floor and look at you as if to say, "So go find someone else to do your dirty work!"

When the prima donna approach doesn't work, she'll most certainly play the "It's not fair" card.

"It's not fair that I have to pick it up! Why doesn't he have to do it? He's the one that left it there!"

Ultimately she'll waste much more time and energy arguing the injustice of the situation than if she had simply picked the Army man up in the first place. Eventually, if the parent stands his or her ground, the child will pick up the Army man, take it to its rightful place, and mutter something about fairness under her breath the whole time.

My kids enjoy saying, "It's not fair" way too much for my comfort these days. Sometimes I wonder if they think they live in colonial times, and I'm King George. My kids are correct. Our house is run more like a monarchy than a democracy, but what they don't understand is that it's much easier to be the king's subjects than it is to be the king.

I hear my two daughters take turns saying, "When I'm the mommy, I won't boss my kids around at all. We'll go to Disney World every weekend and eat ice cream every day."

To that I say, "You can be the mommy and the daddy now if you want. All you have to do is get a job, do the laundry, fix breakfast, do the dishes, vacuum the floor, scrub the toilets, pay the bills, rock the baby, take the dog out, drive the kids to soccer and ballet, shop at Wal-Mart, dress the kids, and then after lunch..."

That's usually enough. Sometimes logic works, but when you've been working ten-straight hours or doing a-half-dozen loads of laundry and your child screams, "It's not fair!" after you ask her to pick up her shoe in the hallway that you just tripped over, logic is not always possible.

"Fair?!? You want to know what fair is??? I didn't have shoes when I was growing up! I had to wear burlap sacks tied around my feet. We not only had to pick the sacks up at the end of the day, but we had to fill them with potatoes and hike them to the market...in the snow...uphill..."