The Tooth Fairy Situation
So Simon lost a tooth yesterday. I am unwilling to admit that he is actually old enough to start losing teeth for real (he’s not quite 5 1/2), so I’m finding comfort in the fact that he loosened this one himself a couple of weeks ago by trying to open a bottle with his teeth. Still, a lost tooth is a lost tooth, so we had no choice but to call in the Tooth Fairy.
I suppose most parents find themselves a bit unprepared for this Important New Role. I mean, one day you’re asking your little boy if he changed his superhero underwear and if he wants to to switch his shoes so they are on the right feet, and later that same day you’re sending your husband on a wild goose chase for a silver dollar and sticking your hand down the garbage disposal to dig through the spaghetti bits and coffee grounds in the vain hope of finding the all-important star of the show, which you accidentally dumped down the drain. Somehow this gig is not as easy as it sounds.
Simon was quite gracious about my mishandling of this first little treasure he had hoped to trade in his sleep for money (seriously, who comes up with this stuff?) and about my subsequent attempt to pass off a cleverly cut bit of garlic as his tooth (“Mom, I think this is a vegetable. It squishes when I touch it”). He suggested we “just explain the situation to the Tooth Fairy and say we’re sorry we don’t have the tooth, but we still really want her to come.” Works for me. We made her (him?) a little video in which my very sincere firstborn child stated his name and age and then sweetly threw me under the bus and solicited a note and a present from this mysterious figure.
This morning Simon found four quarters taped to a note under his pillow. He was gleeful and hardly stopped talking about it for the next several hours. (And this is how we knew that taking it away for the day would be an appropriately painful consequence for the doozy of a fit he threw in the grocery store today.) I watched, rather in awe at how this kid can be so big and independent and so little and childish at the same time. This is his childhood, and I am loving it.
On a somewhat related note, you can read my history with my own Tooth Fairy (and other random facts about my teeth) here.
