Our Tooth Fairy is a Tightwad

When Cal lost his first tooth a couple of weeks ago, we found ourselves once again on unchartered territory.  Not only did we need to manage irregular but predictable visits from the Tooth Fairy, but also unexpected questions and scenarios involving the Tooth Fairy.

I know the drill: lose your tooth, put it under your pillow at night and find that money had replaced that tooth the following morning.  Easy enough, right?

Cal's smile minus his first lost tooth
(that's spaghetti sauce around his mouth)

Cal swallowed his first lost tooth.  That’s the leading theory, anyway.  He lost it at dinner time – he started his dinner with his tooth hanging on by a thread, visited the bathroom during dinner and then returned unknowingly without his tooth.  He didn’t pull it out; it fell out.  It wasn’t in the bathroom.  It wasn’t on the floor on the path to or from the bathroom.  It wasn’t on or underneath the dinner table, though Cal did try to convince us that a tooth-sized fleck of Styrofoam he had found on the floor was, in fact, his lost tooth.  It had to be in his belly or, at least, on its way.

I figure swallowing a tooth is nothing to be concerned about and assume it made its departure in a poop a few days later (which I made the mistake of saying aloud… to Cal… who laughed about it).  The only problem that I had with the swallowed tooth was that it wasn’t part of the drill.  Without a tooth, how does the Tooth Fairy know to visit?  Clearly I knew how the Tooth Fairy knew; but, without the tooth, how would Cal know that the Tooth Fairy knew?

This was an easy one to solve – we had Cal write a note to her to explain what happened, and he placed that note under his pillow that same night.

The Tooth Fairy visited him that night and replaced the note he had written her with a shiny Sacajawea one-dollar coin.

This didn’t measure up monetarily to the reports of other kids’ Tooth Fairies leaving them $5 or $10 a tooth; but it was at least different and, in the eyes of our Tooth Fairy, special and save-worthy.  Cal loved it, though I’m certain that Sacajawea coin is now either lost or sitting amongst the more traditional coins in his piggy (fish) bank.

Cal lost his second tooth before dinner last night.  Like the first, it had hung on by a thread for awhile.  This time, though, upon seeing a small pool of blood at the base of it, I mustered the mental (or stomach) strength to yank it out for him.  To call it a “yank” is misleading – I grabbed a paper towel, told him I just wanted to look at it and soak up some of the blood and then gently pulled it out for him.  It was so easy, he didn’t even know it.  And the fact that I didn’t even feel its release from his gums made it not so much the queasy event that I had made it out to be.

Despite having visions of his tooth falling into our garbage disposal, I rinsed his tooth with water in our kitchen sink and then plopped it into a shot glass.  No note would be needed for this lost tooth – Cal could place the actual tooth under his pillow for the Tooth Fairy to grab sometime while he slept.  To make sure that the Tooth Fairy could actually find and grab this tooth under his pillow (that tooth was smaller than it looks in his mouth), I eventually put it into a Ziploc bag; and Cal put the tooth-in-bag combo under his pillow right before he went to bed.

I woke up to my alarm at 5:07am today (I never set my alarm on a zero, an even number or a multiple of five) and lay in bed a couple of minutes before it hit me – I wasn’t sure the Tooth Fairy had visited Cal!  In a panic, I jumped out of bed and, instead of verifying by checking under Cal’s pillow myself, I woke Dan and asked him if he knew that the Tooth Fairy had visited Cal.  He nodded that he had; so, satisfied, I got into my running clothes and headed downstairs to get a run in on the treadmill.

A little over two miles into my run, a half-dressed Cal emerged on the stairs to the basement muttering something, which I eventually interpreted as the Tooth Fairy hadn’t visited him.  My first reaction was pissed off.  What question did Dan think I was asking him at 5:10am?  I could have addressed it then!  I then got my bearings and figured I should ask Cal a few questions before concluding that Dan had dropped the ball.  I stepped off the treadmill for a few seconds so I could focus and actually speak.

“You checked under your pillow?” I wanted to confirm he had.

“Yes,” Cal responded.

“And there’s nothing there?” more confirmation.

“No.”

“Is your tooth still there?” good question!

“No.”

“Okay, I’m sure the Tooth Fairy visited.  Go up and look again.” And then I told him where he could find a clean pair of pants.

Not even five minutes later, Cal re-emerged, fully dressed and holding a shiny coin for me to see.

“Is that from the Tooth Fairy?” I asked.

“Yes,” he responded without much excitement.

I focused on the coin in his hand.  It appeared to be silver.  The Tooth Fairy didn’t bring a Sacajawea coin this time.  It actually looked like a nickel, which both shocked and didn’t shock me all at the same time.  What a cheapskate!  Personally, I think a lost tooth is worth more than a nickel, so I was shocked that the Tooth Fairy would only leave a nickel.  I probably got more than a nickel when I was a kid!  And that’s forty years ago!  I also know that Dan wouldn’t necessarily think that a lost tooth is worth more than a nickel; and since he managed the Tooth Fairy visit this time, I wasn’t surprised last night's Tooth Fairy left only a nickel.

I continued to stare at this shiny coin in Cal’s hand as I finished my run.  Eventually he got close enough to me for me to see that it was actually a quarter he was holding.  A shiny quarter.  25 cents.  The same cheapskate thoughts I had about the Tooth Fairy leaving a nickel applied to him leaving a quarter.  Assuming this is precedent-setting, at a quarter a tooth, Cal will have a little over five dollars after he’s collected on his last lost tooth – “a little over” only because of that Sacajawea one-dollar coin he got for his first lost tooth… if he even still has it.  Five dollars for a full set of lost teeth.  That won’t even buy the smallest of Lego sets!

Yes, our Tooth Fairy is a tightwad.  Lucky for Cal, he can supplement the quarters our Tooth Fairy gives him with those which he earns for good behavior week over week.  And lucky for us, Cal still sees it that way and hasn't yet realized how cheap his Tooth Fairy is.