Recently, my oldest nephew started shedding his baby teeth. This, of course, forced me to recall one of the creepiest of childhood mythical creatures: The Tooth Fairy.
I’ve always thought The Tooth Fairy was a horrifying notion. How could a myth about a magical entity that collects used body parts from children in the middle of the night be anything good?
First off, baby teeth are ugly and frankly, disgusting. Whatever money that I might get from them was not worth sticking the horrible things under my pillow. I tend to put my hand under there, and I really don’t want to forget halfway through the night that they’re there, and brush my arm against them in the middle of the night when my defenses are low.
Second, and parents, I urge you to consider this point carefully. If some entity said, “Hey, I want to give you money for your kid’s baby teeth, and if you’ll leave them in under your kid’s pillow, I’ll simply enter your house when everyone is asleep, stick my hand under your child’s head take those sweet little chompers. Don’t worry, I’ll leave a few coins in its place,” you would tell that pervert “No *Insert favorite curse word here* way.” Probably you’d also toss a “Keep your *other curse word* hands off my kid’s discarded teeth!”
Frankly, I thought far too long about what anyone would want to do with those teeth, and not once did I imagine it was anything good. As you have probably guessed, my thoughts generally veered into the realm of horror. I guessed that the only reason anyone would want those nasty things was some dark magic, which probably could be used against me in my dreams. That being the case, I really should have gotten more than 50 cents.
I imagined the Tooth Fairy was a terrifying witch, with horrible jewelry made of children’s teeth. I suspected she ground them to powder and sprinkled the tooth dust on her cereal to maintain her youth.
I once had a theory about her planting the teeth in an eerie garden, where she grew gruesome versions of the child whose tooth had been the seed. These misshapen doppelgangers formed an army meant to take over the world. Or possibly, they would just follow their normal twin into a dark alley, where they would kill them and take all their adult teeth.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have shared those with you.
Will it make you feel better if I told you that I never really believed any of those ideas were actually true? If I had, well, I suspect that I’d have never put my teeth under my pillow.