The Tooth Fairy

I have a six year old who obsesses over every loose tooth. My other children were not like this. A tooth came out and we put it under the pillow and the tooth fairy left a little something. That was the end of the story, except for the time the oldest lost her tooth during swimming lessons at the Ken Grill Pool. (The tooth fairy left something and told her she found the errant tooth in the pool.)

For the past two weeks, my tooth obsessor has bugged my dentist neighbor over one particular tooth. Once she found that my neighbor was a dentist, that was it. Every time she sees Mrs. Dentist, Emma alerts her to the wiggle capacity of that tooth. Mrs. Dentist has gone on her two week vacation, driven to the seashore with visions of that tooth.

Yesterday was Emma's six-month cleaning. She dutifully showed our super dentist her wiggily tooth. He jokingly asked her if she wanted him to pull it out. Emma told him that she WANTED him to pull it out right then and there. He was surprised, but thought correctly that this particular loose tooth was really bothering her. So, he did what dentists do. He gave her something to "put her tooth to sleep" and pulled it out. She brought it home in a surgical, hermetically sealed tooth envelope.

Emma now has her gold dollar coin and an empty spot upper right. The dentist told me there are three other loose ones. Oh dear.