Tooth Fairy Time

Here is how Wikipedia describes the tooth fairy:
“The tooth fairy is a fantasy figure of early childhood. The folklore states that when children lose one of their baby teeth, they should place it underneath their pillow and the tooth fairy will visit while they sleep, replacing the lost tooth with a small payment.”
Wikipedia adds this is mostly a practice of the English speaking world. And we, the urban, Westernized middle class are a part of that group...

My 5 year old daughter has been wanting her first tooth to fall for some time. No, not because of the prospect of goodies from the tooth fairy. Rather, it’s because most of her friends have lost theirs. And show off the gaps in their teeth like they’ve passed some rite of passage! Plus, of course, they mock the ones who haven’t lost theirs as being… babies. Yeah, I know, kids are mean.

Anyways, kids can give it back as good as they get. How dumb do you have to be to believe in such things, my daughter would respond. It’s your mom and dad who put the goodies in return for the tooth, not some tooth fairy, she’d snort. Wise kid, we thought. Doesn’t fall for such myths.

And this weekend, she lost her first tooth (Actually, the dentist pulled out the already loose tooth that was stubbornly not falling out for several days now, but that’s just a technicality). So madam now had her war wound; she too had passed the rite of initiation into whatever level kids think enter when they start losing their baby teeth.

Immediately, she flipped her stance and asked that the tooth be preserved… for the tooth fairy! But didn’t you say that it wasn’t real, we asked. At such times, she”ll never have an ashamed, embarrassed by the double standards look or response. Instead, she pulls up that exasperated, teenager like look of  “You people just don’t get it, do you? That was before I lost my tooth; now I am on the other side of the baby-teeth-or-not divide”.

It reminded of that time in Friends, when Joey told Chandler why he was changing his stance:
“What, are you crazy? When a blind man gets his sight back, does he walk around like this? [Joey closes his eyes and walks around with arms spread.] ”
Touché, kiddo, touché.

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarJune 19, 2017 at 2:06 PM

    Very nicely written. You have it in you to present the incidents with a flair of something you sometimes say "a very subjective thing" - and that is LITERATURE. I suppose if you asked the question about literature to Shakespeare or Alexander Dumas, they would also shrug their shoulder and say, "it is all very subjective"! Anyway keep writing blogs. You should also try to send pieces to newspapers for publication. Some subjects like physics, biology (evolution and genetics in particular, you can even present some details of the importance of the microbes) yield to layperson's interest and one feels like reading small bits in the paper than buying a whole book for reading on such subjects. Since you have a very wide variety of interests you can actually select any other domain too. If you keep sending a day will come when publication will start.

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