Magoo still believes in the tooth fairy and defends her honor in the face of mockery at school. The only downside to this centers around the tooth fairy’s complete and utter moron-acy. She is totally intellectually insufficient.
When his tooth fell out this weekend, I thought, I should care about this. There’s some reason I should care about this. This isn’t my first rodeo. I know the drill. But somehow I missed the clue bus. (I did not, obviously, miss the metaphor train.)
Then the next morning, he comes downstairs distraught. “The tooth fairy didn’t come last night!”
As my friend Stephanie said this morning, “A tradition where a kid hides a tiny tooth under their pillow and the tooth fairy is supposed to magically remember it is ridiculous. The tradition should be that the child places the tooth ON his parent’s pillow. I’m sure the fairy would find it there.” I agree. But that’s not the world we live in. We have to take our magical creatures the way they come and the tooth fairy in this dimension likes things done a certain way.
So when Magoo comes to me oozing drama over the fairy’s failures, I have to defend her.
“Well, maybe your tooth is flawed and she didn’t want it.”
He looks shocked.
I continue. “That book we read said she uses the teeth to build her palace and maybe your tooth wasn’t palace-worthy.”
“No-o,” he counters, “It’s a good tooth.”
I shrug. “Well, you can try and put it out again tonight and if she doesn’t come, I’ll pay you 50 cents for it. I’m not building a tooth palace, but I like you. And besides, I could put your tooth under my pillow the next night and try to make a profit.”
“I’ll put it out one more time.”
The next morning he comes downstairs distraught. “Mom! The tooth fairy still didn’t—“
At this point, I have to physically restrain myself to keep from slamming my head into the table. She didn’t come again?! What the hockey sticks?!
I reiterate my offer to compensate him for his dental refuse. But he won’t play. He can’t stand the thought of me hitting the tooth fairy jackpot with one of his extracted body parts.
“You know what it probably is?” he muses, “It was under my Pillow Pet and she probably didn’t realize it was a pillow. She probably thought it was a stuffed ANIMAL.”
So last night he gets a normal pillow from the guest room, and places the tooth underneath. I write TOOTH FAIRY in gigantic letters on my To-Do list. I tell Dan that if he sees her, he should under no circumstances let her go to bed until she’s done the deed.
Then, when the children are slumbering in their beds, and the tooth fairy’s ready to sleep, she creeps up to his room with a fist full of sparkle-dusted coins, removes the tooth from under his pillow… and steps in a massive carpet puddle of urine.
Someone, who shall remain nameless, periodically sleep walks and sleep hoses down his room. This is shocking to find in sock-feet and the fairy ends up waking him up. So there she is with a tooth in one hand, coins in the other with a wet, confused boy awake and staring at her.
I call Dan into the room to help with cleanup and hand him the tooth, telling him that if Magoo notices it’s missing from under his pillow, Dan should “help him find it where it’s slipped down onto the floor.”
Sure enough, as we’re stripping the sheets off the bed, Magoo yells, “Oh NO! My tooth!” and we have to “help” him “find” it.
So we get everything cleaned up and put the tooth back in play and Dan and I leave. The fairy then has to wait 30 minutes for him to go back to sleep before trying again.
And the fairy is tired. And the fairy is sick of it. And the fairy just wants to build her house out of wood with granite countertops like a normal person. And she wants dry socks.
I love this story and am glad you are posting more regularly. I have missed you! My daughter a while back left a note for the tooth fairy asking for $100 and a candy bar in exchange for her tooth, and she left some change with it in an attempt to bribe the tooth fairy. The fairy left a note telling her to do a better job brushing.
The note telling her to do a better job brushing? Classic!
I realized pretty quickly how silly and hard the under the pillow thing was so I got them special tooth pillows that have to be hung on the outside of the door or the tooth fairy won’t find them.
Kind of off topic: I have a running joke with my kids that there is a Poop Fairy that will amply reward any child brave enough to put one of their baby sister’s smelly diapers under their pillow. The worse the diaper the more money they get. So far I have not had any takers… I wonder why.
That pillow thing is genius. I wonder if I could change things at this point. Who am I kidding? I can change things whenever I want. My kids have this odd aversion to dirty diapers as well. Strange.
Awesome. Love this post!
What a well-written, funny post….I love it!
Thanks Cassie!
I rarely laugh out loud but this did it for me. Thanks!
I appreciate many, many, many things about this post…but I shall just say that I enjoyed the little detail that the tooth fairy wants to build her house out of wood *with granite countertops* like everyone else.
The tooth fairy down here wishes for granite countertops too 🙂
Oh, man, the tooth fairy at our house is notorious for being days (and, on one extremely pathetic occasion, months) behind. I think my Magoo is the only one who actually still believes, but that doesn’t stop the other two from trying. It’s never occurred to me to just offer to pay them outright, rather than making sorry excuses about how busy the darn fairy must be these days. I’m not sure they’d take that any better than your Magoo did, though. And, thank heaven, our tooth fairy hasn’t had the pleasure of stepping in any urine puddles. Her preferred nighttime surprise seems to be Legos.
I am just sooo happy to know that our house is the only one where the tooth fairy is forgetful–who came up with this crazy tradition anyway? We had someone loose a tooth on vacation and I had to send Rob back to the room to be tooth fairy before we left so the maid didn’t throw it away!
Boy, did this make me laugh! I’m sorry, I know you’re sick of playing the tooth fairy, but the way you tell it is just so funny. For your sake, though, I hope he outgrows it soon. More importantly, I hope he outgrows his sleep-peeing, because that really doesn’t sound fun.
Love it! A couple of mornings we’ve had sad kids come wake us up to say the tooth fairy forgot – we told them it was still so early that the tooth fairy must still be working her route. Dad distracts while Mom does the job. After several late payouts, we now have the kids write a note to the tooth fairy and tape it to their bedroom door with the tooth – there are a LOT of pillows in our house after all! 🙂