Tooth Fairy

This is Sam. He just turned 7. This was him at Christmas - I don't mind saying that I thought he was absolutely adorable and able to sing "All I Want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth."

Also? I look at this picture and can not believe how much he's grown in the last 6 months! Stop it! Stop it, I say! He lost another tooth this past June on the way to our family reunion, and it got lost in the car. Sam is usually not one to get too worked up about things, and this was was no exception. I thought about suggesting he write a note to the Tooth Fairy explaining what had happened, but then I thought, why bother? If it doesn't matter to him, it certainly doesn't matter to me!

Plus, have I ever told you that I had a real fear of the Tooth Fairy when I was little? It's true. Scared to death of that innocent little fairy. It totally creeped me out to think of some strange person flying into my room and getting under my pillow. But, the thought of getting a dollar was still pretty good, so I finally compromised by putting the tooth on my bedside table. But then I would lay awake at night with my back to the bedside table and worry and fret about whether the tooth fairy had come or not. And I would try SO hard to get up the courage to peek over and look at the table and just see if that dollar was laying there, knowing that if I could just see it, I could relax and go to sleep. But I couldn't look! What if the moment I turned I would look and see her? The horror! I'm not sure what I thought a little fairy was going to do to me, but I knew that you shouldn't see the tooth fairy - it just wasn't done. I had never heard of anyone actually seeing the tooth fairy, so if someone had, they must not have survived to tell about it!

The last time I ever put out a tooth, I was laying there imagining every sound to be the tooth fairy, and I finally got up enough courage to call my mom, never looking at the bedside table. She came in, and I confessed that I was scared to death of the wretched tooth fairy, and she convinced me to roll over and look, and thankfully there was the dollar. I went to sleep and after that decided all that worry just wasn't worth a dollar anymore. I know, I had issues.

So, anyway, I thought maybe Sam had those same issues too and didn't want to admit it, so I didn't say anything. Well, two nights ago, out of the blue, almost 6 weeks after he lost the tooth to begin with, he casually mentioned that he had put a note under his pillow for the tooth fairy. This is what it said:

Dir tuf fare I lost it. Can you tek tis not giv me mune. Sam Brooks

He doesn't mince words, does he? Let's not bother with little niceties, just give me the money! Well, the tooth fairy didn't respond so I said it was probably because he was so rude and didn't ask nicely. So, the next night, he tried again:

Dir touth Feree can you Pleese giv me munee Sam

Then he drew a heart for good measure and a picture of him holding a tooth with the tooth marked out. Apparently it is just too hard to try to explain everything in writing, and they say a picture is worth a thousand words.

It must have worked for Sam because there was a dollar the next morning, and she left the note. Sam thought probably because it was so big it might mess up her flight patterns. He said I could keep it when I asked for it, and it would save him time anyway because he was sure to lose another tooth, and it would save him all the trouble of having to write such a long, drawn-out note again.