Toothless

On Friday, I got to go on errands by myself. (It was every bit as magical as I thought it would be.) When I got home, the shortlings crowded around me talking about teeth and tooth fairies. I ignored it because we're not quite old enough to be losing teeth.

So I smiled and nodded and said "Mmm-hmm," and "Yep, that's right," without really paying attention to what they were saying.

Then Meredith said, "Hey... Thaddeus' tooth came out."

So I said, "What do you mean it 'came out'?"

Then Thaddeus piped up, "We were playing this game and the ball hit me right in my teeth and then my tooth FELL OUT!"

Naturally, I grabbed the tooth and looked at it, hard.

You see, I help people brush their teeth and trust me, nobody's teeth were even a little bit loose.

So when I heard, BALL and FACE used in the same sentence as MY TOOTH FELL OUT, I was quite concerned.

And as I looked at the tooth, it seemed like maybe a little piece of the root was missing.

But maybe it wasn't.

(Apparently, just because your grandpa was a dentist, doesn't mean you are.)

And I couldn't decide whether or not I was holding a whole tooth....

Or maybe just a partial one.

And I looked in his mouth...

And I looked,

And I looked,

But I really didn't know what I was looking at anyways.

So off to the dentist we went.

The good news? The whole tooth came out.

The bad news? It knocked the one next to it loose.

So that night, we put our tooth, in its special treasure box, under our pillow before we went to sleep. We also cracked open a window, and made sure the door was unlocked because we wouldn't want to keep the Tooth Fairy from doing her business.

And in the morning when we woke up, the treasure box was gone, and we found a crisp dollar bill instead.