If there’s one thing I know for sure about raising children, it’s this: it definitely leads to more questions than answers. For example–is there anyone out there who actually believes that juice bags are less messy than, say, an open bucket of red dye? And how come the inventor of Pokeman cards has not yet been lynched? And, really, why is the sky blue, anyway? But, by far, the question that has been first and foremost in my mind (at least lately) has been this: what kind of a person leaves their tooth lying on the kitchen counter?
I’m not talking about one of those tiny little front teeth that are such delicate little slivers that they look like grains of rice; no, I’m talking about a big old honkin’ molar, one of those things that look so tooth-like that a dentist could hang it up outside his office for advertising.
And no: I don’t rent out my home to the local “fight club”–there is no good reason for me to come home and find a tooth lying on my kitchen counter. What there is, however, are two very bad reasons: my children, Clementine and Clyde, also known as, “the tooth-shedders.”
But wait, you say: what about the Tooth Fairy? Doesn’t the Tooth Fairy solve that whole problem of “dental detritus”? After all, no kid is going to leave their tooth lying around once they realize that they can cash that baby in at the Pillow Bank for a nice crisp one-dollar bill ($5 in some houses, I hear)–are they?
Isn’t that the theory behind bottle deposits? That if you make something valuable enough people will no longer throw it out of their car windows? (Or, in “The Curious Case of the Missing Molar,” that they will no longer leave it on the kitchen counter.) Well, that’s the theory, anyway. But, just like you still see bottles on the side of the road in Oregon and Michigan, so it follows that occasionally, even with the Tooth Fairy, you still find teeth on kitchen counters.
This is especially true with my daughter, Clementine: not only has her supply of teeth far outlasted her supply of naivete, her teeth started falling out so late that there wasn’t even a chance to get the Tooth Fairy scheme started in the first place. (That’s the problem with raising skeptical kids: eventually they become skeptical about the stuff you’re telling them, too.)
With her little brother Clyde it was a bit easier. Although his teeth started falling out even later than hers did, he’s at least moderately willing to go along with the whole Tooth Fairy thing in order to collect the payoff. Maybe that’s because with Clyde I at least tried to put on a good show: I even did the whole “tooth under the pillow” thing. (This lasted until he figured out that having a tired parent fishing around in the dark for change was not the surest way to easy money. “What did the Tooth Fairy bring you last night?” “Eighty-seven cents, a paper clip, and a Dos Equis cap.”) Now Clyde and I just work it as a straight up barter situation: he hands me the tooth (usually–thanks to the school nurse–in a nice, clean baggie), and I hand him the money. It’s like a drug deal, but without the glamour. Or the drugs.
Clementine, however–obviously realizing that the pleasures of money are fleeting at best–has gone for the much bigger payoff: grossing me out. And, I must say, that when it comes to grossing somebody out, it’s hard to beat a tooth next to the butter dish (outside of a morgue, that is). Because, just like they always say: cost of a tooth–one dollar. But grossing out your mom? Priceless.