Toothless Wonder

When I was a little girl, it was a big deal to get a loose tooth. 

The blood!  The tears!  The angst!  The worry! 

My dad would pull our teeth out, if we asked him. 

But he meant business, so you had to make sure you were sure--really, really sure--before you ventured.  Once he got hold of you, you might get away with your life, but not with your tooth.

First, you had to hold discussion groups with other siblings.  Was the tooth really loose enough yet?  My sister was of the opinion that some teeth had hooks on them.  And she definitely taught us that the two big top teeth in the middle of your mouth would be the worst trial ever.  You didn't want to ask Dad to pull a tooth that had a hook on it, and you didn't want him to try when your teeth weren't loose enough, because it could take up to an hour of terror.  So, we let our sister and brothers wiggle our teeth and gathered their opinions. 

I would really have rather not have involved Dad, actually, and I tried sometimes other methods I'd heard of, like tying a thread around the tooth and a doorknob and slamming the door.  Those things never worked.  I would wiggle and wiggle and wiggle the tooth, trying to make it looser.  I would reach up and grasp it and try to pull it out myself so that I wouldn't have to go through Dad's vise grip on it, but that never worked either, although I would have preferred it.

Getting a tooth pulled was not something to be taken lightly.

Sure, you wanted the dime from the tooth fairy, but the quest had to be weighed.  You wanted to wait until the trial that lay ahead of you had shrunk down to be worth the reward.

Well, times have changed, it seems.

I have a child who looked up at me one morning when I went in to say goodbye and very casually informed me that he had lost a tooth.

Really?!  How did that happen? I wondered.  And, since he'd already lost his two bottom teeth, it occurred to me that it could be one of the big top teeth.  "Which one?" I asked, wanting to know and not wanting to know all at the same time.

He looked up and opened his mouth.  One of his top teeth was missing.  "It just came out in the night," he said.  He had never mentioned it was loose.  No one had ever wiggled it.

"Where is it?" I asked.

"I lost it," he shrugged.

Wow. 

We looked in his bed and found the tooth.  The tooth fairy came that night.  He was very casual about the two pieces of money he was given, even when he immediately lost one of them.  None of it seemed to be a big deal.

A few days later, it occurred to me to ask him if the other top tooth was loose yet.

"No," he said, and went on with his playing.

The next day, so I heard, he was in class in church and just reached up and pulled it out.  He showed it to me in the hall.

I looked at my toothless wonder, and he smiled.

Cuter, older, and more self-sufficient than ever.

If I wanted a baby, I'd have to have another one.