A Little Tooth Fairy Lidocaine Love

“Can't you see
It all makes perfect sense
Expressed in dollars and cents
Pounds shillings and pence
Can't you see
It all makes perfect sense…”

—Roger Waters, Perfect Sense II

It had been hanging there for weeks. It wiggled, it jiggled, it bent, but it wouldn't budge. Only a few millimeters of gum tissue held it in place. We coaxed her every night to pull it out, but she wasn't biting. Even Bryce kept urging her big sister to pull it out so she could share the Tooth Fairy booty.

This last week it was in, Beatrice allowed the Mama to try and extract it with floss, and while it moved and bled, the front tooth did not come out. And then the morning I was away on a work trip, the tooth did come out while Bea drank her milk. She beamed proudly with her toothless smile during our FaceTime call together.

The next morning after I had come home, the girls were buzzing over the previous night's Fairy visit.

"Beatrice, where's your tooth?" I asked.

"I left it for the tooth fairy."

"What did you get?"

"I got a bag with two gold coins."

"Where are they?"

"One's in my bed and one's in Bryce's bed."

"Yes Daddy -- I got one, too!" exclaimed Bryce.

"Of course. Bryce, you'll loose some teeth soon enough, you know."

Bryce thought about that for a moment, then added, "Well, when I loose my teeth, I'm going to wait until I have three so I can get a big bag of gold coins."

Of course. When you run the numbers, even at one dollar per tooth, that's twenty dollars after all the baby teeth fall from grace, which isn't too shabby for a seven-year-old. We can make that go a long way at CVS.

However, I'm not even sure why we continue to perpetuate the Tooth Fairy mythos, giving money to children for losing body parts. There is pain and fear experienced and associated with losing one's baby teeth, so I get that maybe there's comfort in believing in a sweet fairy who visits in the middle of the night and gives money for the lost tooth is a reward for surviving that pain and fear. Especially if the tooth is in good shape without cavities or decay.

But still. It's a little bit of a disturbing rite of "economic value" passage, isn't it?

I'm not suggesting that we don't do it; the Mama and I received that sweet milk enamel money as well growing up and couldn't wait to put those teeth under our pillows. Although the exchange rate at that time 25 cents per tooth, not a dollar. That's a 300-percent increase in exchange rate (at least the one we honor). Not a bad return over time. And we certainly didn't get a bonus dollar for being a sibling either. Bryce certainly knows how to work the system. And we let her, of course. She just may have a bright Wall Street future.

Either way, from Wall Street to Main Street, we can all get kicked in the adulthood teeth enough worrying about how we're going to stretch a dollar into two, so no harm no foul with a little Tooth Fairy Lidocaine Love.

Right?