My kids believe in the Tooth Fairy. However, our Tooth Fairy my behave a little differently than your Tooth Fairy. First of all, our Tooth Fairy forgets to come from time to time. Calm down. Don’t worry. She gets there eventually. It just so happens that my children believe that if you put your tooth under your pillow and it’s still there when you wake up, that either she had too many kids to get to that night or she was unable to establish the location of the tooth under the pillow. Sadly enough, they are okay with that because they have grown up expecting this from the tooth fairy. What they don’t realize is that from time to time, the Tooth Fairy is so tired some evenings, that she’ll fall asleep watching “Survivor” or “Larry King,” and on her way back to her bed, in a misty haze of sleepiness, forget to visit the child. She doesn’t mean to, but the older she gets and the more kids she has, (to visit in the night, I mean), the harder it is to stay awake waiting for one of the kids to fall asleep.
Another interesting thing about our Tooth Fairy is that there has never been an established rate of coin exchange per tooth. For the littler ones, the more coins the better. So, the Tooth Fairy is able to go to her husbands change drawer in the bathroom, grab a handful, shove it in a sandwich bag, and replace the tooth. At some point, though, they acquire the ability to actually count the money, (darn those school teachers), and that opens up a whole slew of problems. For one, they realize “more” isn’t always, well, more. They also begin to hold private meetings with the older kids asking how much they’d been getting per tooth. When I’m confronted with questions about any inconsistencies, I just mumble incoherently things about inflation, how the rate depends on the weight of the tooth, and then I quickly change the subject. “Who wants ICE CREAM for dinner!”
My nine year old, who is in that “in between” age of not believing in the Tooth Fairy but still wants her dough, will even tell me before she goes to bed with a accompanying wink, to “remind” the Tooth Fairy there is a tooth under her pillow. We have what you would call an “understanding.” The cash keeps showing up for each tooth, and she keeps her mouth shut to the younger kids about the Tooth Fairy’s true identity. I can live with that. I like to think of it as street smarts. (Always see the positive in your kids, right?)
I suppose all moms find comfort in hearing about the shortcomings of other moms from time to time. I just know there has to be another mom out there, somewhere, who is expected to remember that someone in her house needs money for her tooth, when she is so tired, she hardly remembers she has teeth in her own head. My Tooth Fairy does disappoint me from time to time. There have been times when she has gone two nights in a row without coming, and she genuinely feels terrible about it. Gratefully, though, she is covered by the Grace of God. And, before you go contacting the bad-mom police, the Tooth Fairy gets it right most times. If nothing else, my kids will learn to keep away from those people in the world who cannot be depended upon. More importantly, I pray, they won’t want to be one of them.
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