A Toe-Nail Fairy?

We live by a very serious creed around here at the Skillman house:

If you lose a body part, stick it under your pillow and see if you can get some money for it.

This dogma originated from deep contemplation when I was about 6-years old .  An enlightened thinker aren't I?  Yes indeed.

When I was a kid I wondered why some fairy would pay money for a junky old tooth that fell out of your head.  Doesn't really make sense does it?  But the tooth market went gangbusters and seemed to be a big cash cow for a kid like me and I began to wonder why teeth were the only body part that had a fairy on duty doling out the cash. 

I decided to test my little theory that teeth can't be worth more than any other body part lost, so when I was set to have my tonsils taken out, my young mind was abuzz with a plan.  I simply asked the doc to put said tonsils in a jar and I took those suckers home and tried my luck by putting them under my pillow. 

All I got was a sore neck from a large lumpy pillow--Apparently there ain't a tonsil fairy after all. 

Then about a dozen years ago Mitchell was bit by a dog in the forehead.  I'm not really sure what happened because a great mystery-ridden cover-up shrouded both the affair and the abrasion. The bite was concealed with an extra large bandage by someone with a history of unorthodox behavior.  Several days later, after the bandage was removed, it was discovered that indeed the wound was more serious than the "bandage brandish-er" had thought and that something incredibly huge was lodged into the poor kid's forehead. 

Fast forward a creepy month later and out from Mitchell's very own forehead I literally wiggled loose (with a pair of giant tweezers)
a very large dog's tooth!  Which explains his ultra cool Harry Potter-like forehead scar. 

This event was sure to both literally and psychologically scar the kid for life...until I suddenly thought of a great plan...

"Why don't you put it under your pillow and see if the Tooth Fairy will take it?"  I suggested.  Then I built a brilliant case for the payment of any tooth lost from anywhere on one's body; kid or canine.  A tooth's a tooth right??

And so Mitchell tried his luck and put it under his pillow.  The next morning he discovered he had received a windfall of cash for one of the most epic tooth losses of all time.

Ever since then, we've been putting all kinds of lost body parts under our pillows: gum ridden clumps of hair mostly.  Thank goodness no one around here has had an appendix removed because I'd try extorting a few bucks for that too.  A loss is a loss, right?

So when our cousin Madi spent the night over the weekend and she lost her entire big toenail I knew exactly what must be done.  The poor girl, just weeks earlier, had cut her big toe so badly that half the thing was stitched back on so it would stay put.  And while Madi's toe was miraculously saved...her toenail was not.  It barely hung on after "the storm grate incident" and her nail finally gave up the ghost and fell off at our house. 

Chloe, who's very familiar with, and has been well trained in   
"the art of extracting money for lost body parts" quickly sprung into action and ran and got an envelope for ravaged nail and plunked it inside, insisting that Madi write a note to the Tooth Fairy explaining her little mishap.

It was placed under her pillow that night.

In the morning, low and behold, we were elated to discover that there is a Toe Fairy!  and she's/he's ready to pay out!  (and we noticed this fairy is not as forgetful as the Tooth Fairy has been of late.)

So a word to the penny-wise:  If you lose it, and it came from your body, find an envelope it'll fit in and try your luck.  You'll be amazed at what you'll get paid for these days.

Sadly though, tonsils need not apply.

Tooth Fairy Layoffs?

It's happened again.  The Tooth Fairy has made yet another bicuspid blunder.

It's the same ol' problems I've blogged before. But this time we're getting quite worried.  It's one thing for the Tooth Fairy to be forgetful once, or make the exchange in the wrong location twice, but it's starting to get a bit ridiculous. 

Once again Chloe left a tooth under one pillow and in the morning when she checked under it, the tooth was still there.  THEN after filing her complaint with a parent and getting a little "search" help, we discovered there was indeed $2 left under two other pillows.  Hmmmmmm.  Sounds like a problem with redundancy now.

Chloe and I have discussed it and decided something must have happened to the poor little fairy.  Our theory is that perhaps under these hard economic times there's been a little downsizing going on at the 'Council of Legendary Figures' department (that's what Wiki calls it cause we looked it up hoping to see what the deal was with all the missing loot), AND, in order to keep things in the black we think the Tooth Fairy may have recently suffered a lay off and now the Easter Bunny is doing double duty.

The reason for our suspicions is that most of the time Chloe has to hunt for her money.  It's not always directly under her pillow.  The Easter Bunny would certainly fit that bill.  Perhaps forgetting these are not eggs to be hid, just money to be placed--and under the right pillow to be very specific.  All issues that point suspiciously toward fairy downsizing and Easter Bunny behavior.

Whomever is doing the Tooth Fairy's job, it certainly is not the T.F. herself.  Far too many mix-ups or just plain omissions if you ask us.  Which may be why she got downsized.  We're just not sure what is going on.

Meanwhile Chloe just recently lost 4 teeth in a row.  She's got one left before braces.  And recently she's expressed a sigh of relief saying "It's a good thing I won't be needing the Tooth Fairy for much longer, cause she's losing it."

And I agree.  I've been saying all along that I think all our little overwhelmed fairy needs is a nice vacation or a massage or something.  That should help her get her mojo back.

The Tooth Fairy is a Slacker

Seriously, what is up with the Tooth Fairy these days? If you or a loved one has lost a tooth recently, perhaps you've noticed she has gotten a bit scatterbrained. The Tooth Fairy I remember from my childhood was a fairy that was on top of her game. Always prompt, always had cash, and always showed up in the right place and always  right on time. But nowadays it seems to me that she has lost her toothy touch. My poor children Chloe and Connor have seen a far cry from the one I remember. Of late, she's visited the wrong room, suffered some confusion on exactly which pillow to look under, and even skipped over them entirely, only to shamefully show up after three or four attempts on our part to leave a dang tooth. It is all very disturbing.

Take our last dental dilemma for instance.  Chloe lost a tooth and straightaway put it under her pillow.  She even popped it into a cute little envelope and wrote a note on it--albeit a passive-aggressive note from a kid who appears to be destitute for a little extra cash:

Now perhaps the confusion over our latest tooth submission may have started because Chloe has a guest sleeping in her room and so she was sleeping in Connor's extra bed. However, bed swapping or not, according to Chloe this shouldn't have caused even the slightest of problems for our fairy-ed friend since she had heard from several sources that "the Tooth Fairy has "X-Ray Vision". I've heard this little tidbit myself many times and I'm inclined to think it's reliable information. Everyone knows the Tooth Fairy has stealthy eyes and can see really well in the dark. But x-ray vision or not, the Tooth Fairy missed Chloe's tooth completely. We were both bewildered in the morning when poor Chloe discovered she had completely forgot her sealed up tooth. It was very disappointing. Chloe was sad because she'd been skipped over, and me--quite frankly, I started to get a little worried about the mental clarity of our little tooth taker.

As I pondered the dilemma, I felt a little empathy for the Tooth Fairy, it certainly can't be an easy job. So I suggested to Chloe that we should cut her a little slack--perhaps she may not be getting enough sleep these days. I even proposed to Chloe that she might brighten her evening rounds by leaving her some chocolates along with the lost tooth and see if that doesn't help put us all in her good graces and solidify us as her all-time favorite donors. I assured Chloe that she would likely never forget us if we give her a little incentive.

But this tooth tardiness was serious business and Chloe and I came up with an equally serious plan to remedy the situation: we decided to write a "strongly worded note".  The Tooth Fairy probably needed a little direction and should clearly be told that Chloe had a guest sleeping in her room and that she and her lost tooth could be found in Connor's room. I had Chloe go and find me some paper DOWNSTAIRS while I grabbed a writing utensil UPSTAIRS, and then upon Chloe's return we began our lengthy epistle to the Fairy.   As I was writing,    it suddenly occurred to me that perhaps the Tooth Fairy may have simply left her dental deposit beneath the wrong pillow. I told Chloe to go and check under her guest's pillow in her bedroom--just in case. Sure enough, as I was penning the words "cease and desist", Chloe shouts from her room that there was indeed two whole bucks under the wrong pillow! [heavy sigh.] What a relief! She had not forgotten at all! She had just had a momentary lapse of x-ray vision. And believe me, this can and will happen as you get older. It is something I have in common with our mysterious fairy.

Luckily it turns out that the Tooth Fairy may not be the biggest slacker after all. Bad vision? Yes. Occasionally forgetful? Yes. Suffers from pillow confusion? Yes. But I have a feeling she'll be more prompt next time now that she knows there's a little dark chocolate incentive waiting for her on her next pick up.