"Yes....," I said, "they do that. What she doesn't realize is the grief those teeth will give her over the coming years. If she only knew, she wouldn't be celebrating, she'd be thinking about removing them immediately.
She doesn't remember knocking her own front teeth flat against the roof of her mouth on the edge of a coffee table at age two. And little Tipper is a boy, so I'm sure he manage to damage his teeth much sooner.
My daughter doesn't realize the hours of bedtime arguing she's going to encounter when Tipper refuses to brush. Or the money she'll spend on dental insurance, co-payments, and sticky sweet treats after a trip to the dentist to appease her terrorized child, who will then proceed to drool his ice cream cone down his chin and all over his new clothes because the novacaine hasn't worn off yet. Dental-related dry cleaning bills alone are enough to bankrupt a young parent.
If Tipper is anything like his mother, he'll be active in sports, and the odds that the contents of his mouth will survive childhood intact are roughly equivalent to the odds that he'll refuse to drive the family car at age sixteen.
Right. "That's Ok, Mom," I'm sure he'll say, smiling his perfect smile, with perfect skin and perfect manners, to boot. "I don't want to drive the car until I'm older and more responsible." NOT.
I'm sure Tipper's mother isn't aware that her young offspring will try out those teeth on just about everything he can get his mouth around - electrical cords, the tail of the cat, the hand of his pre-school teacher. Rabid dogs have been known to run in fear from a toddler in the midst of a temper tantrum. And good preschools are so hard to find.
She's oblivious to the fact that the Tooth Fairy also is subject to economic indicators such as inflation. The dollar bills she received under her pillow will be treated with scorn and contempt by her darling child. Figuring the changes in the economy since her own childhood, and allowing for inflation, the phases of the Moon and the placement of Jupiter in both her and Tipper's charts, Mom's going to be shelling out about $187.37 for each little canine.
If she thinks that's expensive, just wait until the teen years, when the dentist says the magic word, "Orthodontist." With a third mortgage on her house (the second mortgage going to pay off the Tooth Fairy), and under threat of dental debtor's prison, those cute little "toofins" will require vast investments in approximately 27 miles of metal wire skillfully wrapped around her youngster's choppers to properly guide the growing bony protuberances into the ideal shape of the adult smile. Twenty seven miles of wire that Tipper will promptly go out and entangle in the 34 miles of wire belonging to his adolescent girlfriend, requiring emergency crews to employ the "jaws of life" to free them. With a little luck, the appearance on "911: Emergency" or similar reality television show will help defray the costs.
And when those braces come off, Tipper's dentist will be able to retire to the South Seas on the income he'll make from filling the cavities that have been working for three years on the virgin territory of Tipper's teeth, under the protection of that barbed wire fence of braces, preventing the invasion of any kind of toothbrush, military or otherwise.
On the other hand, Tipper's only six months old, and the teeth ARE cute.
My daughter may as well celebrate now while she can still afford the
phone bill.
