The Tooth Fairy

As I got in to work yesterday I fired up tweetdeck to find a rather interesting tweet, with a photo.  This photo.

Yeah, my boy was missing a tooth.  I’d expected it, tried to prepare myself for it, but damn that thing was only wobbling a little.  Surely it wasn’t time for it to come out yet?

And I was right.  It wasn’t.  He’d had an accident on the way to school.  Quite often he takes his scooter and the husband rides on the road alongside him having taken possession of my bike.  They’d only gotten two blocks away when he’d managed to go flying and knocked the tooth out, getting a lovely purple bruise on his hip in the process. 

There was blood.  Where I would have taken the boy onwards to school and gotten him cleaned up there, the husband took pity on him and took him back home to get him sorted.  And convince him that he wasn’t about to die from blood loss.  That’s our boy; melodramatic beyond belief.

When I got home all was forgotten.  I sat down and he told me about his day, what he did at school and after school club, all about the game he was playing on his PSP and then went pack to playing as if the loss of his first tooth was no big deal.  So I asked him if he was late to school that morning.  “Yeah”.  There’s no point averting your attention from Ben 10 if you don’t have to.  With a little coaxing he told me what happened, there were demonstrations and everything.  He was quite proud of his gap. 

In the evening he retrieved his tooth and we found a small bag to put it in under his pillow.  He carefully made sure it was in the middle of his bed and then we sat down to read a story.  And he told me that the tooth fairy wasn’t real.  I asked him who told him that and he happily told me it was his dad.  No surprise there then.  The husband wanted to tell him there was no such thing as Santa on his first Christmas.  “Really?  Are you sure?”  Then he realised that if he admitted he was, there was no chance of any money from the tooth fairy and he quickly changed his mind.  That kid is manipulative I tell you. 

After I left him I sent the husband up to say goodnight.  I could hear the boy telling him that he wasn’t going to go to sleep.  If he’s like this with the tooth fairy who doesn’t exist, what’s he going to be like come Christmas Eve?

I was very conscious that I shouldn’t forget to do the switch.  The moment I was sure the boy was asleep I did it.  I can remember one year my mum forgetting after my brother lost a tooth.  It wasn’t pretty.

This morning, as usual, I went in to wake the boy up.  He was sleepy, he stretched, refused to open his eyes.  Nothing new there.  But instead of asking for five more minutes he sat bolt upright.  “My tooth!”  He dove straight under his pillow and marvelled at the pound that had been left there for him. 

Now somebody tell my boy to stop growing up.

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