Chapter 20
Last Saturday morning Ginny came inside from playing and had she been a cat I would’ve sworn she’d done caught a mouse. As it was, I figured she had inherited either a toy factory or maybe a blueberry yogurt farm. She was grinning like the Chessy Cat we hear so much about.
She laid down her apple and showed me the surprise—a loose tooth, her very FIRST loose tooth. I’m afraid I slighted her a little. Since we’ve been through this first loose tooth bit twice already, I really wasn’t THAT enthusiastic.
When Lemar pulled HIS first tooth we put it in a baggy and laid it under his pillow.
The good Tooth Fairy slipped in sometime during the night and gave him a quarter in exchange for it.
In MY day the Tooth Fairy brought dimes but with the cost of candy on the rise, the black mustached, six-foot helper to the Tooth Fairy thought perhaps a quarter would be in order.
A few months later Lemar pulled his second tooth. I offered to BUY it so I could have one to keep and wouldn’t have to go into any long-winded explanations about how the Tooth Fairy flew into my jewelry case and accidentally dropped the tooth. I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse—a whole dollar!!
Amy, our middle child, shrewdly watched all this BUISNESS.
It was at least three years before she pulled her first tooth.
She was elated! I got out the baggies and prepared to find the Tooth Fairy a quarter.
But oh, no!! Amy handed me the tooth, “You can BUY it Mommie,” she said, “You pay better than the fairy!!”
So, it’s been the policy since then for me to buy the teeth and I have several in my jewelry case now. Maybe sometime little white “tooth” necklaces will be in style, and I’ll have them all set in plastic mountings—who can afford gold after paying so much for the teeth!
It looks like I’d better keep a little savings laid up in advance, also, Ginny didn’t like the idea of that “wobbly thing” in HER mouth, and she had it out by noon. And Ginny does NOT run charge tickets!!!