Man, the Tooth Fairy is Going to Go Broke!

Okay, first, let me explain that we have never done much to hide the fact from our children that we are the "tooth fairy"...none-the-less, we do go through the ritual of tucking the tooth under the pillow and then one parent or the other sneaking in after dark to replace the tooth with a dollar.

Well, near the last five or six of Darcy's baby teeth, I was beginning to really slip...many near misses of not remembering my duty until the next morning moments before Darcy was going to be waking (or worse, moments after she had awakened)...but this week I have hit an all-time low... Doug lost a tooth at school Wednesday. His brain-dead mother forgot her duty and the following morning we could hear Rayna exclaiming loudly to Doug, "Look Doug! Your tooth is still there!!! The tooth fairy forgot you!!!" AAaarrgg! The horrified tooth fairy rushed in and made Doug lay back down and close his eyes while the tooth mysteriously changed into THREE dollars. (If the tooth fairy forgets, she pays triple!) Doug was thrilled. So thrilled, that he yanked ANOTHER tooth out while at school that day and raced to the nurse's office happily yelling, "RICH!!! RICH!!! RICH!!!" The poor school nurse was concerned that THAT tooth might not have even been loose yet, and called me on my cell phone to notify me what had transpired (there ARE drawbacks to giving our kids money for pulled teeth!). Whether the tooth was yet loose or not, it was at least a baby tooth...so, at least we aren't headed for the dentist for a permanent bridge in the child's mouth...

Anyway, Doug put his tooth under his pillow again last night. I warned him after his bedtime prayers that the tooth fairy normally only pays ONE dollar for teeth...that it is only in the rare instances that she forgets that she chokes up THREE dollars. That said, I promptly FORGOT again. In my defense, so did Doug. It wasn't until half an hour after he had gotten home from school tonight that he remembered and raced to his bedroom to retrieve his money. Moments later, he came to me, with the tooth in hand telling me the tooth fairy hadn't come. Incredulous at my own brain-deadness, I tried to make light of it by shrugging my shoulders, shaking my head and asking, "Well, what do you get when the tooth fairy forgets?" Doug, always my literal child, looked at me sadly and replied, "Nothing." His demeanor brightened right up a second later, though, as I emptied out my pockets and dug up three dollars, muttering something to the effect of "that tooth fairy is really falling down on her job...she owes me THREE dollars". Doug gave no indication whether he cared one whit about what the tooth fairy owed or didn't owe...he was too busy counting his newly acquired riches and assimilating them in with yesterday's haul.



(Darcy, my philisophical oldest child, just finished reading this post and shaking her head, observed under her breath as she left the room, "Like I said, the 'tooth fairy' TEACHES children that you can sell your BODY PARTS for money." Funny...she wasn't so disapproving of the tooth fairy back when SHE still had teeth to lose!)