Prompted

Sunny's Disclaimer:

I've never used a writing prompt for my blog before. As a matter of fact... I haven't used a writing prompt since I was in college a couple years ago. But today, I felt like writing. And what I feel like writing about isn't ready to be written yet.**1

So I Googled.

(Oh, Google, you amazing beast - is there anything you don't know?)

And the prompt that I found struck a chord, so we're embarking on this literary adventure together.

Buckle up, ReaderFriends! Here we go!

The Tooth Fairy: A fun and harmless fiction, or a pointless justification for lying to children?

When I first saw this prompt, I thought immediately of a discussion I stumbled across yesterday on a Social Media website. A friend of mine - who happens to have a young child - was discussing that he was about to lose his first tooth. The apparent chain of events is this:

1. Child's tooth becomes wiggly.

2. Child goes to school.

3. Child shows classmates the wiggly tooth.

4. Classmates weigh in on Tooth Fairy Gift-Giving Criteria.

5. Child comes home to inform Mom that he's ready to lose his tooth, as the Tooth Fairy will be bringing him gold in exchange.

I was flabberghasted. Seriously?! Gold?! I got a quarter for each lost tooth. (And I panicked when I lost a tooth while we were staying away from home. I was certain that the Tooth Fairy would never find me, and that I'd be out a quarter. Which sucked, as I was close to the only candy store I knew about that accepted quarters in exchange for a sizeable portion of candy, instead of just a gumball or something pathetic like that.) I couldn't imagine getting more.

Sure, I knew other kids did - The typical haul for a kid in my class was $1 per tooth. There was one lucky soul who got higher dollar values for more important teeth - up to $5 for a molar, I think. I was on the low end of the scoring stick there.

But I also knew that the Tooth Fairy wasn't as much as other kids thought he (or maybe she?) might be. So there wasn't as much weight to the ritual (outside of getting the monetary haul so I could indulge in more sugary treats to rot out the remaining baby teeth... Ironic, no?) as there would have been if my parents had insisted that there was a little fairy that came in, took my old teeth and left me a gift.

So, in my world, the Tooth Fairy was a harmless fiction. He (or, again, she - We were never terribly specific) was a nonspecific entity that my parents indulged us with as a childhood rite of passage - Not a ritual that they clung to. Perhaps that was a side-effect of having parents slightly older than my classmates' Moms and Dads. Perhaps it was a product of my parents' childhoods - realistic grandparents make for realistic children, who then have baby realists of their own. Or perhaps it was a trickle-down from our economic status. (When your family is on food stamps, you don't give dollars to children for doing what their bodies will do whether you reward them or not.) Or maybe it was a hodge-podge of all three. In any case... when I realized that the Tooth Fairy was a childhood story, and not a Real Thing, I suffered no ill effects.

But I've witnessed children fall apart at their very seams at the realization that some beloved childhood character was fictitious. Which seems cruel, when you consider that the average age of a child whose belief crumbles is somewhere between 8 - 12... and that's such a tough age anyway. Bodies are changing. Social dynamics are changing. Life is a whirlwind of craziness, punctuated by "I'm ready to sleep without my teddy bear now" and "Mom, don't kiss me when you drop me off at school anymore." To have the beloved characters that surround important events such as Christmas/Easter/Tooth Loss taken away - and to find out that they were a ruse that the world imparted upon you - must be a harsh reality to awaken to indeed.

So I must admit that I'm grateful to my parents. They gave me just enough belief to make the events magical, without centering them around a falsehood. Santa Claus? Let's leave him a Sam Adams and a slice of fruitcake. And maybe some rum balls for the reindeed. Easter Bunny? It's okay - he'll find us at our Aunt and Uncle's house. He's clever, and even if he doesn't make it, we'll have a wonderful day with our family. Tooth Fairy? He'll do what he can. But I'm proud of you for being brave through losing that tooth anyway.

Sounds pretty good to me.

**1 Long story. I'll tell you another time.