The last time my daughter, Wednesday, lost a tooth, it was at the dentist’s office.
“Are you going to leave that for the Tooth Fairy?” the dentist asked, moments after he wiggled the super loose tooth from her head.
She shook her head, looked him in the eye, and said, “No. She only gives you a dollar for your teeth. My teeth are worth more.”
The kid wasn’t joking. She didn’t leave her tooth for the Tooth Fairy that night, and she still has it put away somewhere for safe keeping.
Yesterday morning, she lost another tooth. Or, I should say, night before last. She woke up, frowned, and spit a tooth into her hand. This one, she informed me, was going to go to the Tooth Fairy, but it would be the last one if her financial demand wasn’t met: “If she doesn’t give me a hundred dollars this time, she’s not getting another damn tooth.”
We went about our ritual of sealing the tooth in an envelope and putting it in the Barbie Dream House for the Tooth Fairy to find. This morning, however, included in the envelope of money with a crudely drawn sigil of a tooth and a dollar sign, she received this letter:
We read it together. She thought it over. Finally she said, “Okay, I get it. But I still think my teeth are worth more than a dollar.”
I guess my six-year-old is looking for someone willing to buy her teeth, is what’s happening here.
UPDATE: Wednesday just came home and said, “You’re the tooth fairy! You are!” I asked her how she figured it out, and she said, “Because you have money.” She’s very pleased at how smart she is, and she sounds like a detective in a television show: “At first I couldn’t figure out how you got the money in there… then I realized, you were sneaking into my room the whole time!”