Grifting the Tooth Fairy

I took Little Z to the dentist yesterday. She's lost one tooth, our friend the dental hygienist gave her a little lecture about which teeth to expect to fall out next. She said Little Z had nineteen teeth.

On the way home, Little Z asked me,

"How does the Tooth Fairy know when you lose a tooth? Does a bell go off at the Tooth Fairy's house?"

"I really don't know," I said.

Once we got home, Little Z wanted to go outside, "but you can't look at me and see what I'm doing!" she said.

"Sure," I said.

She came back in a little while later with... something. I didn't look. Then she wanted soap. She set about in the bathroom, washing something. Then,

"Do you have any paper towels?"

I shut my eyes and handed her some paper towels.

"I need you to move this, but you can't look!" she said.

I moved a paper towel full of small white pebbles from one table to another.

"I have a way I think to make a lot of money," she said.

Then, she was writing something.

"How do you spell, 'really'?"

"R-E-A-L-L-Y."

"How do you spell, 'all'?"

"A-L-L."

"How do you spell, 'teeth'?"

"T-E-E-T-H."

"Don't read this note!"

Then she disappeared upstairs for a while.

"Don't look under my pillow!"

Then her dad came home,

"Don't ever even look under my pillow at all!" she said. "I have a way I think to make lots of money."

We slept. Zzzzzzzzzzz...

Then, this morning,

"My experience didn't work."

She went off to school.

I took the liberty of looking under her pillow a few minutes ago.



I couldn't get it folded back up correctly again. She's going to know I looked under her pillow!

What happened to the note, I wonder? Maybe she realized it was suspicious to write a note that said, "These really are all my teeth!"

Notice how many. Nineteen.

Crime doesn't pay, kid. There's no fooling the Tooth Fairy.