What first taught me that the world was unfair?

I don't know when I first learned that the world is unfair, though I do have a vivid recollection of listening to the Rolling Stones "You Can't Always Get What You Want" on my Fisher-Price turntable at 3 years old. But I think a better way to ask this is, "when did I first realize how grossly unjust society is?"

I think I had a pretty keen awareness of it in elementary school. My K-5 years were during the Reagan administration (and the first two years of Bush). In 4th grade, Tiananmen Square happened. In 5th grade, the Berlin Wall fell. People all over the world were pissed and making things happen.

I remember having palpable fear in 1st grade that someone would make me smoke crack and give me AIDS (I didn't know how it happened, I just knew people were succumbing to both in droves). I remember not being able to reconcile the fact that some of my friends at school lived up on the hill and rode to school in luxury sedans, whereas other friends at school lived in the shabby apartments around the corner from my house. I didn't know what class was, really, but I knew that I was somewhere in the middle between these two ends, both figuratively in terms of class and literally in terms of location.

I remember getting bullied in 6th grade and not feeling like I could do anything about it. I remember feeling like the pain of children was invisible to adults--something that connected vividly for me with the TV miniseries of Stephen King's IT, where Tim Curry's laugh gave me nightmares for decades. I remember thinking how if the injustices that happened to me were invisible to others, then maybe the injustices to them were invisible to me. So I started trying to listen and watch and read.

Whether it was Public Enemy rapping about 400 years of chattel slavery or reading Steinbeck novels and Rod Serling teleplays, I started taking in all these experiences that were both foreign to me, yet strikingly relatable. Everyone was fighting invisible monsters. And it's why I have to question whether certain people that perpetuate the wrath of monsters--are they aware of the evil of they're bringing upon others? Or are they just unable to see beyond their own personal horrors?