My Summit with the Tooth Fairy

I have a bone to pick with the Tooth Fairy.  Easter Bunny?  You’re on alert, too, so you should both just have a seat.

It’s like this.

My kids are in school and school-aged kids talk to other school-aged kids.  They talk about their weekends, their families, their adventures.  Their weekend adventures with their families.  What I’m trying to say is, they regularly compare notes.

Then, all that comparing will eventually come back and bite an unsuspecting parent square on their dimpled ass. Which is why I need to have a long talk with the magical creatures that are invited into my home and the homes of my kids’ friends.

You see, when my daughter, the one who just lost her first tooth, comes home and says, “Mommy!  Little Johnny lost his tooth too!  And do you know what the Tooth Fairy brought him? FIVE DOLLARS.” She will eventually stop and think about it and then hit me with, “Mommy, why didn’t the Tooth Fairy bring me five dollars?  I only got one dollar.”

I’m sure you can see the problem.

I was under the assumption that a dollar was more than reasonable for a baby tooth.  The only reason I didn’t give her fifty cents is because I didn’t want to wake her up when the coins clanged together.  She’s six.  It’s not like she needs to feed her family of stuffed animals exotic tea and organic cookies.  When I was a kid my Tooth Fairy only left us a quarter and we liked it.  And she had to fly uphill both ways.  Through a snow storm.  With no shoes!

Kids have what? Twenty teeth? You give a child five bucks for every tooth and that’s… that’s… excuse me while I check my abacus…  That’s a lot of damn money.

And then when the Easter Bunny comes to her friends’ house and leaves a scooter and a new bike for the brother and sister living there, my kids looks at their chocolate bunnies and other handmade gourmet chocolates (that I drove almost an hour to buy so my kids could have the same candy I had when I grew up because I’m making memories here, dammit!) and they say, “Why didn’t the Easter Bunny leave me something big like a bike?  The Easter Bunny only gave me chocolate.”

What am I supposed to say to that?!  You know, beside “Uh honey? You have a bike.”

I can’t compete with that Easter Bunny and that Tooth Fairy.

Scratch that.  I don’t want to compete with them.

I won’t compete them.

What I’ll be doing is scrambling for a reasonable explanation of why that damned rabbit left big gifts we usually reserve for Christmas and birthdays at other kid’s houses when he only left gifts of sugar and maybe a trinket at our house.  I’ll be patiently explaining the Tooth Fairy doesn’t always leave money and every kid is special and blah, blah, blah.  While cursing you, the giver of gifts, and your spawn under my breath.

I will allow that the Tooth Fairy may have had to take more than one tooth from under little Johnny’s pillow and she was all, Hold up.  I’m not flying through that window every other day to take another tooth.  You’ve got to bundle those things up together and I’ll catch you another time.

Or maybe the Tooth Fairy forgot to make a pickup because she was too busy on Twitter or Facebook so she was making up for her oversight.  Or maybe Little Johnny was full of shit, although I doubt it.  Kids don’t mess around with the  booty they get from the Tooth Fairy.  I’ll even allow for the Easter Bunny leaving a big gift this year because the parents didn’t want to seem indulgent for no reason and the big eared one was doing them a solid.

Just… Let’s not make this a habit.  Okay?

Because when I hear that leprechauns came to the house of young Seamus O’BarelyIrishOnHisDad’sSide and left candy and clothes with shamrocks on them and diamond encrusted Claddagh rings… The gloves are off, buddy.  You just wait until I tell those kids about the loot they should be getting for Arbor Day.  It won’t be my wallet that’s empty.