Fair Foul: The World's Smallest Lady

"Fair is foul, and foul is fair: / Hover through the fog and filthy air" (Macbeth I, i, 11-12).

Those are the chantings of the Weird Sisters, otherwise known as the witches in the play Macbeth before they proclaim to the play's namesake their self-fulfilling prophecies.

That has not much to do with what happened today except that I went to the fair, and I ended up leaving in a bit of a foul mood because I did something that I'm really ashamed of but that many seemed indifferent to.

I love the fair. I rode bunches of rides until I almost made myself sick, I ate corn dogs and funnel cake, I was having a great time. But then I came across a booth with a painting of a lady sitting on the palm of someone's hand which advertised The World's Smallest Lady. "See the world's smallest lady for only a dollar!" shouted the loudspeaker. Those I was with were eager, and, thinking it was some kind of cheap hoax, I went along and paid my dollar just to see for myself.

I went around the corner to see the "World's Smallest Lady" and found a very short, slightly disfigured woman who obviously was affected by dwarfism. As soon as I rounded that corner, it hit me that this is a real, live person. A person with feelings and a mind and a life. God, I felt so ashamed. She just sat there and nodded at people who walked by. I quickly acknowledged her with a pitiful nod, averted my eyes and walked on. Some people were actually stopping right in front of her and staring. What were they thinking when they saw her? Look at that freak. I can't begin to imagine how humiliating that must be. To have people ogle you like you're an animal in a zoo.

I couldn't believe I had done that. I watched a human being being exploited at the fair. And not just that, but I partook in the exploitation. I did pay a dollar, didn't I? I hated that. Passionately. And it undid the fun I had up until that point. I tried to explain how I felt to my friends, and maybe they felt a pang of remorse, I don't know, but they must've put it out of their minds because then they wanted to ride the thing that suddenly shoots you up in the air, suspends you and then unexpectedly drops you back down.

"The World's Smallest Lady" or not, that woman is a human being, and created by God just like the rest of us. It made me feel sick that her condition was being exploited for the entertainment of others.