Thursday, January 15, 2009

the tooth fairy and me

In early Europe, there was a tradition to bury baby teeth that fell out. Some believe that the Tooth Fairy evolved from the tooth mouse depicted in an 18th century French language fairy tale. In "La Bonne Petite Souris," a mouse changes into a fairy to help a good queen defeat an evil king by hiding under his pillow to torture him and knocking out all his teeth. (Source: Wikipedia.)

So in the interest of continuing the tooth fairy tradition, I asked my dentist on Wednesday if I could have the tooth he decided it was necessary to extract. He assured me I didn't want it. But what if I had put it under my pillow, and the tooth fairy (i.e. my husband) decided to leave a twenty there? We will never know.

After the dentist's toilsome job of pulling my tooth, I decided to tell my favorite tooth fairy story. When my middle son was 5 or 6, I happened to remember my role as fairy (which sometimes wasn't the case, and I would have to "find" money under the bed or behind the headboard to cover for the lapse), and tiptoed into his room to perform my duties. The next morning he came to me and said, "Mom, I saw the tooth fairy last night."

"Did you?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, his bright blue eyes sparkling up at me. "She looked like an angel."

11 comments:

Linda said...

awww...sweet story.

TheLubeFaerie said...

Aw how sweet! I am a horrible tooth fairy myself and have caused my children a few tears over the tooth fairy forgetting to come.

Pastor Larry said...

Kids you gotta love them

Simon Butler said...

Aw!

There was a great drawing at Elfwood of the dark side of the tooth fairies which I downloaded a few years ago, and which vastly amused (and slightly alarmed) my two small nieces when I showed it to them.

Marchelle said...

aaaawwwww... how precious!

countrygirl005 said...

aww :) I'm glad you got your tooth taken care of. I'm sure the tooth fairy would have come if you could have left it there ;)

KingOfPain said...

Glad that's squared away. Tooth aches suuuuck.

There must be something about you... what with your husband saying you glow, and your son mistaking you for an angel. Are you even... human?
What can you tell us about the future??

Benita said...

Sweet story indeed!

MauritaMason said...

Thanks, everyone.

Simon, I could have used that drawing long ago when my sons' teeth were hanging by threads.

KoP, the future? Worry not, for everything will be okay in the end.

jadedj said...

Our oldest daughter, who is now eleven, recently asked me, as an after thought, "where is all the tooth fairy money" she got as a little girl. I hated to but, I had to tell her that we keep reusing the same silver dollar over and over. She calculates that we owe her about $30. Gotta fork it up, or she's going to tell her little sister (no, she wouldn't do that...I think.)

Unknown said...

Women gifting money ARE angels. How s your mouth feeling after the extraction - got some good drugz?