IMPERSONATING MAGICAL BEINGS: TOOTH FAIRY
My biggest Moma challenge, by far, was the tooth fairy gig. I had the general gist of it: kid puts tooth under pillow, fairy impersonator replaces it with a sum of money that is only enough compensation to purchase candy that will result in more lost teeth. [Is this what they mean when they talk about “Circular Economies”?]
First challenge is how much to give. When H lost her first tooth, it was because she got hit in the face with the Poma lift (a diabolical ski towing device). It not only knocked out her tooth but cracked it in half. The Poma incident was arguably M’s fault, having not warned her that to get off you needed to sling shot the seat to one direction while forcibly flinging your body to the other. As a result, the compensation from the tooth fairy was guilt-driven, and doubled because the tooth had cracked in half and clever girl argued that it amounted to two teeth. Whatever the unique circumstances of this first tooth valuation, it started us off on an inflated monetary benchmark that was remembered with each subsequent tooth and passed on as sibling lore. The result was ten years of trying to scrounge a toonie (non-Canadians: google ‘toonie’) on a moments notice. [Upon reflection I don’t know why I didnt just give whatever loose change I found in the junk drawer. Its not like they can count at that age.]
The tooth fairy, not surprisingly, became a beloved mythical friend to H. In one way, this made it easier for me because she was enthusiastic about having the special tooth containers - the sparkly miniature pillow with the teeny tiny tooth pocket - and a designated spot to leave it on the night table, cast in the glow of a specially installed night light. It was a dream set up for the parent who had to creep in like Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment or that creepy mom in Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever.
So, tooth fairy duty was going well…until H decided to escalate her relationship with her magical BFF.
One night, I find not just a tooth in the little pouch, but a minuscule bit of paper, folded upon itself dozens of times into a little spit ball. It turned out to be a note to the tooth fairy written in microscopic lettering. It is totally illegible aside from the closing request “Write Me Back” along with an arrow pointing to a 1mm x 1mm outlined square, presumably the allocated area in which to write a return message. Now for those of you who read “Origin Story”, you know that my handwriting is exceptionally ill suited for writing a response in the guise of a tooth fairy. In the end, I cheated and put a tiny series of dots and wiggles and hypothesized that it “must be in fairy language”. I was both proud and exasperated when H reasoned that it made no sense that the fairy could read her ‘human language’ note, but not respond in kind. I proposed that perhaps the fairy writing said “I am sorry, I cant read this note, but thank you for thinking of me.” She sensed a cope out, I am sure - and the glow came off the fairy’s aura just a tad.
Because very little of parenting experiences can actually be applied to subsequent children, S & C posed a whole new set of hurdles.
S was always painfully torn between wanting to benefit from the tooth fairy bartering system, and being fascinated by the tooth and wanting to keep it. This was a problem because on any given night she could change her mind mid way, and I wouldn’t know whether I was on deck or not. Every night I would have to creep into her room and fish around under her pillow, holding my breath lest she wake up to my face an inch off the end of her nose and my arm trapped beneath her head (cue: nightmares). Once, I didn’t find it was under there, because I had accidentally swept it out from under the pillow into the shag rug where it was found underfoot years later (suggesting a subpar vacuuming regimen). I eventually had to put an expiry date on the tooth, a deadline for the great 'save vs monetize’ debate. But timelines and S didn’t mix well - they just added stress to the most difficult decision she has faced in her whole life (apparently). So I simply started taking the teeth from their hidey holes when she was at school. The tooth fairy had apparently started working a day shift.
It was with C that I began Full-Fairy-Fail. It could be argued that C’s lack lustre fairy experience suffered from third child syndrome. That was possibly a factor, but not in the way you’d expect. It was not that I wasn’t equally (and by equally, I mean to the barest amount) interested in the tooth fairy gig. The problem was that with three kids on the go, I was 3x tired. Additionally, C was a night owl. I was regularly asleep before she was. The upshot of this was that I slept through fairy duty constantly - once five (yes, 5) nights in a row. Each morning, C would wake up to a toddler’s version of WTF? (which with my trucker’s mouth influence was probably actually WTF?). It was time to get creative. While she was in the bathroom, I would rush in and put tooth fairy bounty inside her pillow case, under her bed, behind her night light…
“Oh, Look! Here it is!”.
“But why didnt she take the tooth?”, C would quite rightly ask.
“I guess she finished building her fairy castle and doesn’t need any more bricks??” one might perhaps respond. But that was too lame, even for fairy-fail me. As I recall, I would just pretend I didn’t hear her and rush off to flush the tooth down the toilet like an ill conceived pet fish.
We then entered the Tom’s Toothpaste phase (which, in a feat of bad timing, started right after we no longer had dental insurance). The result was that all of C’s remaining baby teeth rotted out and had to be pulled. A grand finale that cost us vastly more than $2 a tooth, but thankfully put the tooth fairy out of a job once and for all.