Fairies prettier than your mouth

A few nights ago, N lost another tooth. They just keep falling out of her head...

She's a sweet kid, and we make sure things go as well as possible for her. She's a good sport. But she's fed up with her rotten Tooth Fairy, and I don't blame her.

It's common knowledge that all kids are assigned personal tooth fairies at birth, or at least upon emergence of his/her first tooth. There's just no way a single fairy could keep up with that kind of workload-worldwide pickup? Not to mention exchange rates and different currencies. Santa aside, the Tooth Fairy is personal. And around here, I've heard of inflated tooth prices of $20 U.S. (I'm dead serious about that, by the way).

Well, our children have been assigned more frugal fairies- a condition that has been cause for some grumbling, especially after hearing about the blinged out Cali-fairies. And until now, we've stayed out of the whole thing, knowing it's out of our jurisdiction.

Our kids get dimes.

Which makes sense to me. I mean, fairies are little. They can't be airborne with big bills like quarters, to say nothing of the problems of aerodynamics involved in the transport of $20 in paper. And, plus I got dimes when I was little.

It never occurred to me, as a child, to contact the Tooth Fairy for any reason. Mine was reliable as I recall. Times have changed. N's tooth officer has been a little lax. There was an unacceptable lag of about a week last fall. N wrote the following just after Halloween...


Damn. I was really hoping that would be legible. Ok...
"Dear Tooth faire, I think you have been unfair. You sciped Me twice. I like you but please be more careful about when you take my teeth. I would like you to write back. What color hair do you have? Thanks, Love, N PS. Write down here-" And the fairy responded in tiny writing"Dear N, I apologize for missing your tooth. I was off duty for the Halloween Fairy Ball in New Orleans, and I lost track of my regular life...there were lots of handsome frogs to kiss and make princes out of and the punch was very very strong. Then I went to the beach in Florida with some raccoons (it's a long story)- anyway, I only carry dimes because I am very small, but here are 2 dimes to make up for lost time. I will add your beautiful molar to my growing pile. Someday i will have enough teeth to build a castle (with a moat to keep out raccoons). Tooth Fairy"

Sounds like a fairly shady fairy to me. That fairy's no lady.
As for the recent extraction, the Tooth Fairy casually let 3 nights go by before mistakenly (?) leaving my little girl a penny. Brothers and Sisters- What is this world coming to?