Tooth Fairy Decay

My wife Jennifer and I are bad parents. We do not beat our daughter. We do not send her to bed without supper for being bad. We do not neglect her or tell her she is rotten. In fact we shower her with as much love as we know how.

But we are still bad parents. We’ll be inducted into the Parenting Hall of Shame because last night the Tooth Fairy forgot to come. Our daughter lost a tooth. She dutifully put it under her pillow. And the next morning, instead of two shiny new quarters, she found . . . her tooth.

I have no excuse for this. We were overtired. We’d had very rough days at work. But that is no excuse for not making sure that the Tooth Fairy performed her sacred duty.

To be sure this is not as great a sin as forgetting to have the Easter Bunny hide her eggs and replace them with chocolate. It is not as unforgivable as Santa Claus not making it down the chimney with a sack of toys. But six-year-olds believe in magic, and that means they expect the Tooth Fairy to turn enamel into money.

This is where we really fell down. We jeopardized her belief in magic. So I did the only conceivable thing. I told her something must have gone wrong. Like the Grinch, I thought up a lie, and I thought it up quick.

“Your mom works for Sprint,” I said. “They have access to all the telephone numbers there. I’ll have her call the Tooth Fairy to complain.”

The child thought this was a grand plan, but she cautioned Jennifer not to be too mean, because she didn’t want her to make the Tooth Fairy mad enough not to come at all. Like I said: bad parents.

When Jennifer came home from work, she told the kid that she had spoken with Harriet, the Tooth Fairy’s assistant. Harriet deeply apologized and said the Tooth Fairy missed several children last night because things had been especially busy. She promised the matter would be righted tonight, did Harriet.

Our daughter was appeased and went to bed with high hopes for tomorrow. When dawn broke, the tooth was gone, replaced with an apology note and an extra quarter as payment for the mistake.

This is where Jennifer and I are truly criminal. We humanized the tooth fairy. We took a magical creature, and made her into an everyday adult. She forgot something. She was too busy. She had assistants do her apologizing for her. And our daughter accepted this with no complaints or questions.

I will never forget the day my parents told me there was no Santa Claus. I was crushed. I didn’t want to believe I’d been lied to. I didn’t want to accept that all my friends had been right. Sure I suspected that there really wasn’t magic in the world, but I didn’t want to know for sure. But at least my parents didn’t turn Santa into a modern businessman, who blew it with a customer and so sent an apology and a coupon for 10% off on the next purchase.

For the time being, the kid doesn’t know what we stole from her. But I do, and that’s why I’m going to nominate us for Worst Parents of the Year.

Like all parents, we will make mistakes as we go through this wondrous adventure known as child-rearing. But I hope that none will be as egregious as humanizing the Tooth Fairy.