Tuesday 26 November 2013

The tooth fairy problem

While I'm on the subject of the mythical creatures that wander round my house in the dead of night (feels like Piccadilly Circus round here sometimes - I'm thinking of making sure I put my dressing gown on when I go to the loo, just in case), I've got a problem with the tooth fairy too.

I'm not going to get philosophical here - although I am utterly bemused as to who originally came up with the idea of a fairy who gives you money when your teeth fall out (you can't blame 4th century Greek Bishops for that one, surely, and entertainingly the wikipedia page on the tooth fairy (yes there is one) says that the paragraph on her (his?) origins "needs expansion") - but that aside, the problem's much less complicated.

Once you've cleaned your teeth, gone to bed, turned the light out, remembered the stupid tooth fairy, got up, tripped over the shoes someone's left beside the bed, turned the light back on, scrabbled around in the loose change to find something sufficiently generous but not excessive (there are children in L's class who get notes), crept in, felt for a tooth under a pillow IN THE DARK (and please say I'm not the only one surprised at how small the teeth are once they come out), got it out, dropped it on the floor, wriggled around under the bed, found it, realised you've left the cash in your own bedroom, retrieved it, tripped over the shoes again, gone back, put it under the pillow, got back into bed and acted surprised in the morning....

....what are you supposed to do with the tooth?

12 comments:

  1. This made me laugh out loud! Superb. I have that still to come as my 6 year old has had no wobbly teeth. When you work out the answer let me know! :)

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    1. At the moment they're sitting in the pretty box on top of my chest of drawers. Only a matter of time before she finds them though and then I'll have some explaining to do....

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  2. Our tooth fairy likes the teeth to be left in an egg cup on the bedside table (she's such a slacker - and sometimes it takes a night or two for her to remember in any case). She throws away the teeth, except for 12-yo's which she returns to him, because he is making a collection of his own teeth. She's very flexible...

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    1. 12-y-o is STILL losing teeth?! How long does this stage go on for? Am I still going to be scrabbling around for loose change when I'm 50?!

      How does your tooth fairy remember who likes what? I'm not sure mine is that competent...

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  3. Our tooth fairy likes to have the tooth in an envelope, by the pillow not under it and has been known to leave the requisit pound (a pound, dear lord) in 5 pence prices...

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    1. Ours leaves a pound too. There was some debate amongst the tooth fairies about this, but at the time there was a shortage of available 50 ps and then a precedent had been set...

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  4. Now you've got me researching this. Twitter has thrown up this so far: http://carlygoogles.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/how-did-whole-tooth-fairy-thing-get.html

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  5. Mine (or rather, theirs) are in a random box and I never fail to freak myself out when I find them, forgetting that THAT'S where I put them.

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  6. Our teeth go in the bin. The first tooth gets a toonie (that's Canadian for a two dollar coin) and every subsequent tooth gets a loonie ($1 - so named because of the Loon on the back of it). The littler girl already has a loose tooth so now I'll be tracking two sets of loose teeth. I like Iota's egg cup idea...

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  7. Er, sorry, I meant the tooth fairy will be tracking the loose teeth...

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  8. When I worked in the toy shop, I sold quite a few cutesie little boxes with "Tooth Fairy Look in Here!" messages on their lids. Or little dollies with pockets for you to put your tooth in.

    For parents who are done with the whole scrabbling under the pillow thing.

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I know. I'm sorry. I hate these word recognition, are you a robot, guff things too, but having just got rid of a large number of ungrammatical and poorly spelt adverts for all sorts of things I don't want, and especially don't want on my blog, I'm hoping that this will mean that only lovely people, of the actually a person variety, will comment.

So please do. Comments are great...