Nothing But the Tooth

At age six, my firstborn is finally getting ready to lose his very first tooth.  Quite appropriately, it's the first one that originally appeared five and a half years back. My breasts remember it well. Front bottom left. OW! OW! OW!

And might I say, OW!!!

They tell you in "The Books" that when an infant nips you while nursing ("nip" being a euphemism for "death chomp") you should gently squeeze him closer, thus cutting off the air supply, and associating that unpleasant suffocating feeling with the bite. Makes a lot of sense, if you can handle the words "infant" and "suffocate" in the same sentence without coming dangerously close to hurling.

But when your nipple is munched in a serrated vice grip, the last thing that occurs to you is the stolid wisdom perched on the bookshelf. Rather, the immediate natural urge to fling the offending beast to the floor is mysteriously derailed by the maternal urge to protect, causing an odd audio side effect not quite reaching G above high C.

I'm pretty sure that a deafening shriek falls pretty close to mild suffocation on the deterrent scale. But I digress. The offending tooth is, after all, on it's way out.

How thrilled my son is at this rite of passage. He strolls around agape, absently wiggling it, probing it, tugging it, (the TOOTH, not the "other") till the manners police threaten to cart us both away, on principle. Truly, it's gross. Makes my teeth hurt, just watching.

This happens to be my very first experience with tooth loss from a position of responsibility. So, I don't know the ropes. First of all, what's the going rate for teeth these days? I wouldn't want the tooth fairy to look cheap or anything.

I slyly ask my son "So, what did Alex get for his tooth?"

"Ten Dollars."

TEN DOLLARS?!?!??!

Okay, well I can't necessarily make an informed comment on Alex's heritage, but I'm pretty confident that there's absolutely no royal lineage associated with the Kawa family name. These are strictly middle-class teeth we're talking about.

I went so far as to privately ask his teacher. Yes, she confirmed an occasional Hamilton for a first tooth. What are these parents thinking? If you pay more for the first one, you've gone and set a precedent! It's discriminatory, really. What makes the first one superior? If anything, molars should rate higher. Shouldn't there be a standard? I'm going to write my congressman immediately!

I can tell you this, if MY little Mr. Moneygrubber got $10 for a tooth, I'd have to hide all the pliers in the house. Because he'd be yanking left and right, with visions of action figures, and possibly a new bike flashing across his eyes, in between the dollar signs. Like a slot machine.

I can see him paging through the sale circulars from the Sunday paper, circling toys, and counting how many "teeth" they cost.

No, I'm thinking a buck. Is that too cheap? Maybe two dollars? I don't know. But after all this IS the tooth that pierced my left nipple. What's the going rate for that sort of thing?

Don't say ten dollars.