I Want the Tooth!

The following is a story I wrote for a Writer's Digest Contest a few years back. I procrastinated until the 12th hour, and ultimately submitted it after the deadline. The instructions were to write a short story that began with the sentence "When I first told my family about ___, they didn't believe me." The story had to end with "And that's how I ended up with dentures." Here's what I came up with. Purely fictional, except my mother's intelligence of course. If only the folks at Writer's Digest would have seen this...well, I'm sure nothing would have happened. Enjoy!

When I first told my family about the real identity of the Tooth Fairy, they didn't believe me. For years they had naively perpetuated the idea of a mystical, yet unmistakably real winged angel bringing fortune and good luck in the absence of molars and incisors. Child after child, tooth after tooth, and dollar after dollar, the legend grew and everyone believed. Oh Granny was good. Granny was really good. But Granny slipped up one hot summer night, and I was never the same.

My mother is a very intelligent person. She was college educated and ran her own consulting business from home. She was fiercely independent and revered by many. However, at the ripe old age of 43, she still believed in the Tooth Fairy. You see, my grandma has a bit of a power complex. She revels in the idea of knowing something that others don't. When my mother reached the age of twelve and still hadn't figured out that it was her mom dropping off the cash while she was counting sheep, my grandma made a decision that she could never reverse. From that day on, she became the Tooth Fairy. Permanently.

My grandma Dotty was an active woman. She had a healthy diet. She did the daily crossword and took long walks every day, keeping herself in great mental and physical shape. Maybe that's just something Tooth Fairies do to stay sharp. First sign of a wobbly tooth, she was there on cue with a crisp dollar bill to maintain the illusion. But she never told anybody. Not even my mother. So my mother never assumed that role because she never knew it was hers to assume.

There were a few close calls throughout the years, like that time Granny was in Florida when I lost a tooth. She had to call her friend Betty who owed her a favor and ask her to sneak into the house. Betty climbed through a window, hid under my bed until I fell asleep, and then put a flattened dollar under my pillow and escaped the same way she came. She was 85 years old, and we were none the wiser.

Or there was that time my sister lost a tooth when she fell camping.

"The Tooth Fairy is everywhere," my mother reassured her.

When the dollar didn't come, my grandma, absent from the campsite that night, reminded her that the curled up sweatshirt she used as a pillow made her ineligible for tooth reimbursement. It was genius. Later the next night, with the family back at home and in full snore, she fulfilled her obligation and the fairy tale continued. Until the summer of 1991.

I was ten years old when I caught her. We had recently moved into an old refurbished home. The combination of creaky wood floors and a restless summer night proved enough to restle me from my slumber just as Granny's hand had found the underside of my pillow. Catching someone in such a precarious situation while you sleep would normally be enough to trigger a scream, but I remained calm. Maybe deep down I had known all along. Santa Clause? Fake. Easter Bunny? Fake. Tooth Fairy? It couldn't be, could it?

The night I caught Granny red handed is the night I decided that her secret must be revealed. I immediately told my mother, against my granny's wishes, but she laughed at me. I guess 43 years of classical conditioning can't be reversed by a 10 year old boy with a midnight revelation. I had to prove it. I had to catch her in the act. And that meant I had to start losing teeth. Problem was, I had already lost them. So I was on to plan B. As painful and ridiculous as it sounded, I became my own dentist and started extracting teeth by any means necessary.

My attempts to frame Granny were quite pathetic. I tried staying awake but Granny stayed up longer. I tried faking it and leaving a rolled up wad of tissue but she left a note that read, "No tooth, no dollar." I tried setting my alarm clock in the middle of the night but Granny unplugged it. And then unplugged every other appliance in the house. The next morning she eloquently described the non-existant winds that must have knocked over a power line. My hockey smile was developed in vain. Apparently over the course of 40 years she had learned to sidestep all possible traps. I proceeded to lose all 32 adult teeth in my quest for the truth. 32 dollars later, it was never uncovered.

And that's how I ended up with dentures.