Yesterday, Alex turned to his dad and told him there was no such thing as the Tooth Fairy.
Apparently, lying in his bed the night after Christmas, he had started thinking. He knows fairies don’t exist1. The Tooth Fairy is a fairy. Therefore, she doesn’t exist.
But he didn’t stop there. He went on to consider the problem of the exchange of teeth for money. Was there a more plausible agent than the now-deprecated fairy? Of course there was; he knows that I creep into his bedroom every night after he’s asleep to give him one last kiss and tell him that I love him.
So he reckoned that Martin or I would exchange the tooth for money in the night.
Coincidentally, he lost a tooth yesterday evening. He considered setting a booby trap to catch whoever was doing the money exchange3. But he forgot to put the tooth under his pillow last night. I’d left it on the shelf in my bindery.
*** 4
This morning, I was in the bindery getting a hair stick. I called him in and pointed to the shelf where his tooth had been last night, and where a nice shiny Euro coin was now sitting.
He laughed and laughed. He accused me; I said I’d left a tooth there the night before and there was a coin there now. He reckoned it was his dad instead.
He won’t take the coin, either. Principled little guy.
- Why? I told him, in the context of Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book, and it accords with his very good reality/fantasy distinction2
- Unlike his reality/science fiction distinction, which is weak
- He’s capable of it; he has a couple of kiddie spy kits that have motion sensor alarms.
- This is a Murder of Roger Ackroyd reference, if you are familiar with the book.