The Tooth Fairy

The tooth fairy assigned to our house is totally incompetent! Oh, we used to have a good one years ago when my older children were wandering around toothless, but there must have been some lay-offs in the poor economy so that the fairies could still afford the rising cost of teeth. The current tooth fairy seems to be fairly over-worked and more than a little scatterbrained.

So here’s the deal. My son lost a tooth Thursday. He put it in the designated tooth fairy spot (you can’t put things under his pillow because he “nests” under and beside his bed with a huge pile of blankets and pillows). Yep, you guessed it—it was still there in the morning.

The accepted excuse for this occurrence is that the child must have pulled out the tooth early and the Tooth Fairy didn’t have them on the schedule for that night. Yes, this has happened several times before. I mentioned her incompetence, didn’t I? The procedure is repeated for a second night and usually the Tooth Fairy gets her act together and takes care of things. To help the process along, I suggested the child draw a couple of pictures for his door and window asking her to please stop by. He found this a very embarrassing solution. Huh. It made perfect sense to me. Well, without a posted reminder this time the old gal didn’t remember she had something to do until last night—Saturday.

She looked around. No tooth. She dug around. No tooth. She shifted all of the covers and miscellaneous implements of sleep around the boy. No tooth. It was very frustrating, but I guess this particular child had given up any trust and faith he had left for the Tooth Fairy because the little bugger simply wasn’t there.

She left him a note and all, paying him but insisting he leave his tooth for her to pick up the next time she had to fly through his neighborhood. Yes, she covered her tracks this time.

The child quietly brought me the note this morning. I asked him where the tooth was if he hadn’t left if for the Tooth Fairy.

“I dunno.”

Great. Now what? Are there Tooth Fairy bandits out there that go sneaking off with the porcelain treasures before the real Tooth Fairy can even, ahem, remember to pick it up?