Assisted Procrastination

Nails on a chalkboard – annoying just on principle.

American Idol auditions – hysterical if not lame.

Bleeding wounds – pretty fascinating from a medical perspective (assuming I’m not the afflicted).

Elementary school kids with teeth dangling, randomly falling from their faces – Dear God, Bring Me A Xanax! It seems *this* is the thing that runs chills down my spine. I never knew this about myself. I certainly don’t remember having this problem during my own childhood.

The Kid is 7 next week and has now lost 4 teeth. The first 3 were your standard, run-of-the-mill loose tooth gets looser and one day falls out completely. We ceremoniously place it in the felt bag and The Tooth Fairy handles the rest with no problem. Well, that is, assuming no one noticed her cringing every time The Kid demonstrated the current state of the tooth by wiggling it with her tongue.

As her mom, I want to join in her excitement and be happy for this major life stage. Really I do. But just the thought of that tooth just hanging in her mouth is too much to bear. Even worse is the thought (let alone the sight or sound) of her attempting to chew food, only to bite down on the dangling tooth. This literally makes me shudder and turn away. But I’ve learned to deal. That is, until tonight.

Tonight, I looked at The Kid while eating dinner only to notice that the 1 tooth top gap in the front of her mouth had doubled in size. I was completely unprepared for this. There was no build-up, no anticipatory tooth wiggling for weeks preceding. No, tonight it fell out while eating stromboli at the dinner table. This is not a food typically hazardous to first grade teeth. Not only did it fall unexpectedly, it was then mistaken for a chunk of broccoli and swallowed without notice. Now I had to sit at the table and be excited for The Kid while staring at 3/4 of a steak and cheese sub (which I can’t possibly stomach with the mental image of the fate of the tooth running through my head). To make matters worse, I now have to contemplate how this can be explained to The Tooth Fairy. I don’t think the parenting books ever mentioned this scenario.

We decided The Tooth Fairy will get a picture and a letter explaining the situation. I, on the other hand, get to pay for this experience. Yet again.

I’ll have you know, I shuddered through this entire blog post. It’s only fair that you too can share in my spine-tingling evening. What makes you shiver? I promise not to laugh if promise not to point your periodontally-challenged children my way.

This entry was posted on February 23, 2008 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Ponderings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: teeth, The Kid