Spoiler Alert: If you are a young person under the age of 12, please read no further. I know that this stern warning most likely will not distract you from your quest to read something you really shouldn’t, and in fact may actually entice you to study these writings even further.
I too was young once and snuck a peek at my mother’s strange paperback novels. The ones with the chesty, flowing haired ladies straddling a horse with an equally chesty, flowing haired man in an open pirate shirt stroking the bareback mare. Nothing good ever came out of those novels except my love of Fabio and a hankering for a white corseted dress. Likewise, nothing of importance can come out of you reading this blog. So run along now and go eat candy, or watch useless cartoons, or shoot someone in a first person action video game. Master the skills that allow our future young leaders to dominate science and math tests worldwide. Oh, wait…
Ok parents, now that the children have gone, I can be candid. Adults across this great nation need to come up with a uniform cover for this tooth fairy business. My son lost another tooth tonight. He’s starting to resemble my great-uncle Claude from the foothills of Kentucky, except he lacks even the one front tooth the old man uses to gnaw off his toenails.
Anyway, the kid’s starting to get inquisitive. Tonight, he sat me down under a solitary hanging light in the unfinished basement storage room. After offering me a drink of hot chocolate or some nicotine gum, he began to drill me about the “Dame with the Golden Wings.”
“Who is she, ma? Where’d she come from?”
“CJ, we’ve been over this. She’s a fairy. She comes from a different dimension where all the fairies live,” I sighed.
“And remember, don’t be sexist. Boy fairies exist too. And normally they are much more beautiful and better dressed than all the others kinds of supernatural creatures and most human ones. In fact, I’ve visited their land so often, they’ve knighted me as Dragella, Countess of the Hag,” I said in my most authorative tone.
“And what does she look like? Is she a small person? Or a flying troll? Answer me. For the love of Optimus Prime, I deserve to know the truth,” demanded Little Bit.
I now realize he has acquired my husband’s cross-examination skills. The same ones dad uses on me when he asks about the original prices on all my 50 percent off sale buys. The traps are endless.
“She’s obviously a human, but a mutant one. I think they must have been sucked into their dimension by a wormhole during the great earthquake,” I stammered.
“And, the wings are engineered to look great, but they’re really useless. Like Auntie’s fake nails that she glues on, but when she actually goes to scrape ear wax out of her ear with the long claws of doom, they tumble off. Fairies are all about image. They want you to believe they have these magical abilities, but they are just really magnificent at breaking and entering. A few may have been angels, the Hell’s Angels kind, back in the 80′s.”
No longer playing the good cop, my son stuck his hand in his front overall pocket and slowly pulled out a strange little pillow. He placed the object on my knee. I peeped into the tiny compartment in the front and found… a tooth. But not just any tooth, another young boy’s canine.
“Do you recognize anything familiar?” my young Sherlock asked. “In front of you, is Freddy Bowler’s vampire looking tooth. The tooth fairy visited him last night. She left him $20 under his pillow. But, mystery of mysteries, she let him keep his tooth. I smell something fishy, mums. Something that only a floss pick might uncover after a good brushing.”
Damn it. He knows. The jig is up. My husband and I only leave a buck on the sheets somewhere around his head and take the tooth away. Stupid Freddy and his rich family. Who the hell gives a kid $20 for a freaking tooth. Transplants from the East Coast, that’s who. That kid still sucks his thumb. He’ll need to save all that dough for some braces here in a few years to fix that horrible horse overbite.
I scramble. “Obviously, there is a tooth market, much like our very own stock market. If one night, an abundance of teeth are ripe for picking, the price for each individual tooth goes down. However, another night the fairy could find very few choppers, so they pay more for what they harvest. Supply and demand, my boy. Supply and demand. They use the teeth as a source of power, you know. Like a coal factory. Only they incinerate teeth. That’s why rainbows always glow over their homeland.”
Totally not falling for it. His sarcastic reply, “Ok, hot shot. But why did they leave the tooth?”
“Because Freddy has horrid breath,” I lie. “No one likes to talk about it. Did he mention the note that said the $20 was a bribe for him to never put another of his nasty fang teeth in a pillow enclosure. Halitosis is lethal for fairies. Just like vampire’s can’t handle garlic breadsticks or nice silver, even if it’s from Tiffany’s.”
Finally, my little boy smiles his toothless grin. I see a roll of duct tape, some tongs, and several long nails hit the floor behind him. “Makes sense,” he says, and runs away to bury his tooth underneath his pillow.
So, my dear parents, as my story illustrates we need a Uniform Code of Tooth Fairy. I’ve averted this crisis, but rest assured, another doubting Thomas will lisp more questions soon. Please contact me ASAP about forming a committee to remedy this lack of cohesion. Until then, best of luck surviving your future interrogations.
If you are a child that, despite my warnings, have read this whole mess of words, know that this is a fictional account. The tooth fairy does exist. If you don’t believe me, find the documentary called True Blood on HBO. You’ll see real life fairies and werewolves on the show. But don’t use me as an excuse when discovered. I’m too busy making up my own.
