Tooth Fairy

“My tooth hurts.” My 6-year old son whined.

 

I looked at the offending tooth and wiggled it. I must have made a disgusted face because my son immediately shut his mouth and pushed my hand away. I smiled and said that he was going to loose his first tooth. He was so excited because his friends in his class had already lost some of their teeth.

 

A couple of days went by before he finally decided it was time for the tooth to be gone. He ate an apple and it came right out. I'm still surprised he didn't swallow it, it was so tiny. He put it on the window sill in the kitchen and forgot about it.

 

I started looking up the going rate for a tooth, which was crazy. The internet had the tooth fairy giving a couple of dollars to a crisp hundred dollar bill. I really wanted to do something different, which led me to discovering a company that sells animal teeth that the tooth fairy can trade for human teeth. My husband said he could just go out back and pull a tooth out of one of our pigs that had kicked the bucket. I'm still not sure if he was kidding or not, but the idea of pulling dead animal teeth gave me a shutter and a quick “No!”

 

The internet gave me the next idea of giving a quarter and a coin from another country. I loved that idea because we had a jar with foreign currency just collecting dust. At least it could collect dust in my son's piggy bank.

 

Our night time ritual went by and my 6-year old still didn't mention his tooth. I asked if I should go get it for under his pillow. He simply said no and rolled over in bed. I was disappointed because I was ready for the tooth fairy to come. I had done my research and even had some glitter to top it all off. The next night was the same, followed by the next night, and the next, until my husband said he will when he's ready. The next morning I asked him why he didn't want the tooth fairy to come, he explained that he didn't want her to take his tooth. Whew! I was so relieved that he didn't say he was scared of a little mosquito like creature that would fly into his room and his bed at night to take something that belonged to him. Yeah, because that's not scary.

 

That night my 6-year old wrote a sweet note asking the tooth fairy to leave his tooth. My husband helped him make a lego box with a lid to store his tooth and any future teeth, which was gently placed under his pillow.

 

Bright and early the next morning my son ran into our bedroom to show us what the tooth fairy left, a quarter, an Australian coin, and a note with glitter on it. We found Australia on the world map, which is where the tooth fairy had just come from before she made a visit to our house.

 

This ritual continued until the tooth fairy didn't make it to our house when he lost his third tooth. He was so disappointed in the morning, but the next night she explained what had happened. She was in Korea and had to stop across the ocean because of a thunderstorm. With her note and a quarter, a Korean coin that had 100 on it was left. My son was very excited that he had 100, which made up for any storm. (It just so happened that my brother was stationed in Korea when he was in the Army.)

 

A friend asked me what will happen when we run out of foreign currency, after all that is a lot of teeth between all four of our kids. I said, “The tooth fairy will just have to go to the bank to exchange her currency.”