Tigger, my niece, is six. Last week she lost her first tooth. Her adult teeth were coming in already and she’s been telling me for weeks that her baby teeth are loose. Then she would demonstrate by wiggling her finger over her teeth a whole lot, yet the teeth never moved. She wiggled at it and worried the mess out of it to no avail. Finally, though, the tooth got loose and she was ecstatic.
So last week she was ready for it to come out. She was insistent. Rumor has it one of her friends got ten bucks for her tooth so I imagine this had a lot to do with it. (BTW, Tooth Fairy – screw you. I remember getting quarters for my teeth.) She insisted so much that Martie grabbed a tissue and gave that tooth a twist and sure enough, it popped right out.
I called Tigger the next day to see how much the Tooth Fairy left her.
Jimmie: Hey, baby, did the Tooth Fairy come?
Tigger: Yes! She left me a five dollar bee-yul!
Jimmie: Wow, five dollars, huh? That’s nice.
Tigger: Uh-huh. It smells life barf. It’s magic.
Jimmie: I’m sorry, what smells like barf?
Tigger: The five dollar bee-yul. Like barf. That means it must be magic. I bet I can buy ten dollars worth of stuff with it.
I wish I had that kind of optimism. I don’t know about you, but stuff that smells like barf has never been magic in my book.
Love, Jimmie 