Tooth Fairy Tricks

In honor of MiniMe having her first loose tooth, I thought I'd share some Tooth Fairy Tales from the Rockin'Bauer Haus.

The most important thing to remember about Operation: Tango Foxtrot is that there may not be a lot of lead time for proper planning. It's not like Operation: Sierra Charlie where you will be bombarded with constant reminders that Christmas is on its way. Besides, Operation: Sierra Charlie is easy - it's happens on the same date year after year after year.

Only slightly more difficult is a flawless execution of Operation: Echo Bravo. The date changes from year to year, but Echo Bravo always rolls around on some Sunday between late March and mid-to-late April. Again, the marketing geniuses in your TV and at your local Walmart will constantly remind you of EB's impending arrival.

There's not as much predictability with Operation: Tango Foxtrot. You are on your own to be prepared beforehand & there will be no marketing reminders to help you out along the way. What's worse, the dates always change and never have any significance like October 31 or July 4. You will be required to perform necessary magic on dates like March 6 or August 19 (those are nothing dates to me, yours might be different). And, it's important to note: whatever magic you work for the first big event, it will be expected without any deviation for all subsequent events.

You can be quietly rolling along with only a $20 bill in your wallet & right before bedtime your little darling looses a tooth. Of course, she'll be expecting 2 brand new $1 bills for the effort because that's what the Tooth Fairy always gives. It must be two separate bills because small children still think any kind of "two" is better than "one". And, don't be trying to substitute 6 quarters, 5 dimes, 3 nickles and 2 pennies - even though it's more money. That's not what the Tooth Fairy brings. She always brings two crisp $1.

From personal experience, I also don't recommend giving children foreign currency because they don't understand exchange rates. You will just end up wasting a lot of energy explaining that 5 D-Marks is actually more than $2.

I'm not saying that I am the worst Tooth Fairy helper ever, but between Man & I, we've run into several a couple of Tooth SNAFUs along the way.

SNAFU #1. Laze-E lost her first ever tooth while she was in first grade. It was a very big deal for it to be loose & for her to wiggle it constantly.The wiggling and tooth drama went on for weeks: Hey, Mom, feel how loose it is. But, DON'T pull it. Promise? And, DON'T make it hurt. Look, Dad, it's looser. OK, wiggle it & see how loose it is, but just a little bit. Is it going to hurt? No! Don't touch it. I'll just wait until tomorrow and wiggle some more. I don't want to pull it. Hey, look how loose it is.

When the tooth finally came out, Little Laze-E was thrilled. Surprisingly, it didn't hurt one bit & now she was finally going to get the honors of hiding her tooth under her pillow and anxiously await her very first visit from the Tooth Fairy.

And, she had a really cool hole in her mouth for her tongue to play with.

So far, so good, but then the real drama begins to unfold. Laze-E went to rinse her tooth off (because newly extracted teeth are nasty) and dropped it down the drain. Going, going, gggoooooooooonnnnnneeeeee! Very first tooth ever & it's washed down the drain within minutes of coming out. I'm sure you could imagine the hysterical crying and extreme duress of a child thinking the Tooth Fairy wouldn't come because the tooth was permanently MIA. After all, the Tooth Fairy only leaves money because she takes the tooth.

After crying for like ever a while & eventually calming down, we wrote a nice letter to the Tooth Fairy explaining the situation. Laze-E even drew a picture of the tooth as evidence of the event. Tooth Fairy came later that night, performed her magic & they all lived happily ever after . . .

Until one day quite some time later, Little Laze-E looses yet another tooth. I know, they just keep falling out of her mouth & I keep having to jump through hoops to remember the money/pillow thing. This brings us to SNAFU #2. It was a Friday night when this particular tooth came out. I was beyond exhausted because back then I was a working mama with an actual 9-5 & crashed early. I left specific instructions for Man to work the magic and he said that he would.

Only he didn't because he forgot. So, the next morning Little Laze-E all sad & feeling unloved crept into the office, where Man was doing his early morning Net surfing, crumpled into the corner, put her head on her knees and cried her eyes out.

The Tooth Fairy forgot to come & her heart was broken.

Now, at this point, I was still asleep but got jolted awake as Man charged into the bedroom & proclaimed Oh, Shit! He quickly grabbed his wallet off the dresser, produced about $4-5 (or twelve, who knows really?) and headed to Laze-E's room to help her "find" the money. The cover story was that Laze-E only looked under one of the bazillion pillows she had on her bed. Silly. The Tooth Fairy left the guilt money wad of cash under one of the other pillows (just like two seconds ago with help from Dad). See? It wasn't worth all the drama.

Oh, and look. She even left your tooth. (Because those little suckers are extremely hard to find under a bazillion pillows & when you have more important things to worry about like hiding money zippity quick.)

After that, everything was fine until a few years later. Laze-E lost a tooth while Operation: Sierra Charlie was in the final stages of planning. Because she was older at this point, she only casually mentioned in passing that she lost yet another tooth. And, because it was like the umpteenth one to fall out, it didn't register with my brain as a significant event.

Enter SNAFU #3.

I completely forgot about the fairy thing & Man didn't come to my rescue.

So, the next morning, Laze-E was full of drama about how the Tooth Fairy didn't come & that confirmed all of her suspicions that she does NOT exist. And, to add insult to injury, her lousy parents didn't even love her enough to sneak a lousy $2 under her pillow and pretend it was from the Tooth Fairy.

Oops! This goof-up was way too close to Operation: Sierra Charlie & not a good time to lose any of the magic associated with childhood heroes. Once the Tooth Fairy loses her magic, she's like the first domino to fall with the EB and SC not far behind.

Because I strongly believe in Christmas Magic, I had to help the Tooth Fairy out - again. So, I did the most practical thing possible: I yelled at Laze-E for a messy room! There was no sympathy about being let down, no shoulder to cry on, no speculations as to what could have really happened - like maybe the Tooth Fairy was really busy or got lost because we were at a new house. Instead, I ranted about clothes on the floor & junk all over the place. What's this? Eeeeeewwwwww! Is that cereal & milk from last week? Maybe, just maybe, the Tooth Fairy couldn't even get in the room, did you think about that? Maybe, and probably now that I think about it, the Tooth Fairy did leave money, but who could find it in the pig sty of a room? Try cleaning up your room, missy, and until then, don't come crying to me!

Hey, her room was a disaster area and I desperately needed to buy myself some time to think of a plan.

Predictably, Laze-E did not run immediately into her room to clean it up. I knew she wouldn't & that gave me plenty of time to sneak the money into her room and place it between the mattress and the wall, just behind one of her pillows. Like it fell there by total accident the night before when the Tooth Fairy was supposed to come came.

How brilliant was that plan? I got the idea off the Net. Just goggle what to do when tooth fairy forgets. There are some good ideas out there. Which leads me to believe there's a least one other parent who has dentally failed their child at some point.

Anyway, later that afternoon Laze-E cleaned her room & was elated to find the stashed cash. Belief and magic were restored, just in the Nick of time.

SNAFU #4 was bound to happen. As children get older, they tend to stay up later & later, which makes it trickier & trickier to do any clandestine activities involving teeth, money and pillows. One particular night not too long ago, Laze-E lost another tooth. I suspect that she just picked a tooth (any ol' tooth) and pulled it out because she wanted the money.

Regardless, I was determined to make a sneak attack to deliver the cash. Only I was tired from being HausFrau all day and didn't feel like waiting up for her to be sound asleep. So, I totally cheated & jammed the money into the edge of her light switch plate - which works great in Germany since the light switches are on the outside of the rooms. Works out even better if the Tooth Fairy never takes teeth in the first place, which ours doesn't because of the very first one going down the drain. Besides who wants to dig around amongst a bazillion pillows looking for a small tooth in the dark without awakening the sleeping child? My advice, leave the tooth, what are you going to do with it anyway?

To date, Laze-E still has not lost all her baby teeth. Now when the occasional tooth falls out, she goes to Man, holds up the evidence and asks for her money. Personally, I love the new way of doing things. It's so simplistic. And, I can enjoy a glass of wine without having to worry about alcohol-induced memory loss that might interfere with any kind of fairy duty.

Doing nothing sounds great and all, but MiniMe is already so excited about getting her first visit from the Tooth Fairy. I suppose I need to start planning the next Operation: Tango Foxtrot, which means I need to drag out the fairy wings, dust off my wand and raid Man's wallet.

Who knows? We may even be able to completely avoid Tooth SNAFU #5.

Uh-huh. Could too.

It's possible.

Anything is possible . . .

Even fairies who magically show up in the middle of the night to exchange teeth for money.

Anyone know where I would find one of those?