2 decades have gone by and I now have children of my own, the world has changed since I was 10 and my children are not exactly like I was at their age. Sadly they are more open eyed and are intuned to fact from fiction and things that just don’t add up.
It started with me trying to keep tradition; Santa sneaking in gifts through the door instead of the chimney and the tooth fairy leaving her monetary gifts behind too. Santa was debunked by the time they were 4. He came to be known by different names—all of the members of my family. By the time the eldest child was 8, they had learnt to gather their meagre savings, send a verbal list of things they wanted to their aunt. Of course, savings and gifts wanted never added up, but did they care, they knew Santa came in different shades and sizes with different pocket sizes to go with it.
Before I totally loose track, lets go back to the very beginning. The children were introduced to tooth fairies immediately they lost their first tooth and tradition continued. Of course this process started with the first child who strengthened the belief with the 2nd child who should do the same for the 3rd and so on. But the first at 5 believes tooth fairies should be introduced to all children and so when a friend of hers in school looses her tooth, even though it was a day late before she knew about it, she told her friend about the tooth fairy. The girl of course deciding that if my daughter got monetary gifts for losing her tooth then she could too puts her tooth under the pillow. Next day the report was tooth still there, then the questions begin to trickle in.
At that point damage control wasn’t so difficult, the tooth fairy had rules and if there were not followed through, nothing came forth. There was this one time the tooth fairy almost became broke, 3 teeth popped out 3 days in a row and unlike when I was young and we got N1 notes for this generation of children it was N50. On the 3rd day, the tooth fairy weary from flying out to the same home, to the same pillow for 2 consecutive days overslept. A tear storm soon ensued since it was a model tooth too and quickly damage control took over. Immediately she left the room, the tooth fairy flew in and threw what she could find under the pillow quickly. Then it was loudly announced the tooth fairy was sure to have come around breaking her rule of coming around at night, but it was possible it could have happened. To our surprise, she did come around but left only N20...totally unbelievable but maybe she was broke. That explanation didn’t settle in exactly the way it should have.
My second daughter was even more difficult her first tooth and the usual visit from the tooth fairy went well, but the 2nd tooth was sigh such an adventure. Her tooth didn’t exactly pop you see it came out when she fell although it was loose already but alas we weren’t sure if the tooth fairy would come to visit or not and this got her worried.
So as usual, under the pillow it went or so I thought. That night the tooth fairy must have either over slept again or was extremely busy since nothing was left behind...but there was a twist, the tooth was held tightly in her fist all night because she wanted to see the fairy when she came. Ah children!!! Well the fairy obviously must have visited but saw what the little girl did and decided to come back later.
To break the camels back, this must have been done to put me in a tight spot, the girls tell their lesson teacher about the tooth fairy and he in turn asks me in front of them if it was true or a story I made up. I look at him in disbelief wondering what he expected I should say, so I defend tradition and say...Yes the tooth fairy exists and she always will till the kids are old enough to let her go.
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