I was an early tooth kid.  I had all my adult teeth and a mouth full of braces by grade 5.  By the time I was a teenager I had nice straight teeth and had to find other ways to look like a gawky freak (frizzy perm and bad clothes?  Done and done).

Angus has gotten the early tooth gene from me.  He’s 4 and lost his first one last night.  It’s been wiggly for a while and after dinner he was moving it around with his finger.  I was really grossed out and trying not to show it and hoping to god he wouldn’t ask for help.  He said “ouch” a couple of times and then out it came - a tiny white tooth in his hand, a tiny bloody crater in his mouth.

We had to find something out to put it in so it wouldn’t get lost under his pillow.  We found a film canister and put a label on it.  We had to take pictures of him grimacing to show the hole in his mouth. He looks mildy insane but the grandfolks will love it.

And we grown-ups then talked amongst ourselves about what kind of cash the tooth fairy puts out these days.  I got a quarter when I was a kid, so what does that relate to in inflationary terms now?  Honeybunny and I decided on a toonie and at 10:00 last night I slowly pulled the film canister out from under the pillow, under his head and replaced it with the coin.

This a.m. he proudly shows me the toonie and tells me about the tooth fairy visiting.  And then he says something about driving a car onto the ferry and I realize he has no idea what a *fairy* is.  He prefers books about cars, trucks and pirates. 

He thinks we’re talking about the boats that haul people and cars across bodies of water.  He thinks a boat came into his room in the night, took his tooth and gave him money.  Isn’t it crazy all the stuff that kids have to figure out?  The best part is that it didn’t give him nightmares.  My kid’s such a maritimer, I love it.

I say, “oh no Gus, a tooth fairy is a fairy, like the small girls with wings?  Kinda like a dragonfly?”

And he gives me this stare that says, “ohmygod I hate it when she hits the crack pipe before her morning coffee.”

So I turned on the computer and googled some pictures of fairies.  He was cool with the bug-like girls.  Hopefully as cool as the ferry that he thought visited in the night.