Never Try To Trick The Tooth Fairy

Generally I am all for teamwork, especially among children. This time however, I think my kids may have spent a little too much time together working on a get-rich-quick scheme. There was an advertisement in the newspaper for a toy. This was no ordinary toy, or so they told me. It was an affordable playing machine.

My son and daughter worked together for quite some time. They were talking secretly and drawing schematics on how they planned to carry out their get-rich-quick scheme. They were really having a good time.

"My son and daughter finally playing nice together," I thought. "My son and daughter making plans together," I thought. "My son and daughter, not fighting," I thought.

Using my "Mommy ears" to their best ability, all I could make out of their conversation was that they intended to trick the tooth fairy.

What I expected was something like my sister and I attempted. We were about the same age as my children at the time, 5 and 7. She and I thought we could trick the tooth fairy by biting off the tips of candy corn and putting them under our pillows. Candy corn has a perfectly white tip and if you bite it off just right you can get a tiny bit of orange from the second layer of the candy, which to us resembled blood at the end of a tooth. We would giggle in bed and wait, hoping like crazy that our plan would work. It never did but that did not stop us from trying over and over.

My kids know the tooth fairy is no dummy. There was no way that they could fool her with a piece of candy or anything else for that matter. They needed a genuine pearly white.

My daughter, unbeknownst to me, tied a yoyo string to one of my son's teeth. Let me just say, none of his teeth were loose. He pulled one way, she pulled the other.

There was no yelling or crying just a lot of quiet, and this mom loves quiet! I was so glad they were playing together I didn’t want to ruin it by checking up on them. So I didn’t.

I should have.

They came running through the house laughing and shouting, “We did it, we did it!”

I looked at my kids, who were smiling. My son had blood dripping off of his chin but was still smiling. One of his teeth was no longer there.

I was afraid to ask but did anyway, “What did you do?”

That is when my son, in a very Brady Bunch "my tooth ith looth" kind of way, told me all about their plan and how and why they did what they did.

Anyone who has tried to trick the tooth fairy knows that she does not give full price for a tooth that is pulled before it’s time. When they awoke the next morning and only found half of the money they expected to find, they were pretty disappointed. The boy refused to give his sister her cut of the deal and they were acting like their old selves again in no time.

The moral of the story is, never try to trick the tooth fairy. Let your kids be kids. Let them be loud and argue with each other and if things get too quiet run as fast as you can to check on them!