August 2, 2011

Apparently, The Tooth Fairy is going through tough economic times too.  10% of children did not receive any money this year, and 7% received less than a dollar.  Are you kidding me?  First of all, I don’t understand the whole “Tooth Fairy” thing as it is.  In what messed up world do you get rewarded with nothing less than MONEY for losing your baby teeth?  This has got to be the dumbest idea a non-parent has ever come up with!

When I was a kid, not only was there no such thing as a Tooth Fairy, but we didn’t have “Fairies” of any kind.  Forget getting rewarded for losing a tooth.  You know what our “big reward” was?  Pulling the damn tooth out yourself, so Grandma didn’t tie a thread to it and the other end to a doorknob, and then yank the door to pull that tooth out.  You were given a simple choice, do it yourself or Grandma will do it for you!  Forget money, forget going for ice cream afterward, forget parents saving the disgusting thing and giving it to your spouse on your wedding day.

You think I’m kidding?  There are people I know that got a bag full of goodies on their wedding day.  Their future spouse’s baby teeth, hair, even molds of their crooked teeth before they got braces on!  I was surprised to hear that it didn’t contain their baby finger nails, and penis foreskin from the guy’s circumcision…  Somehow I have a feeling that those parents might have that somewhere as well, stashed far far away…

As much as I love many American traditions, I think this particular obsession with saving every tiny, mundane and useless piece of childhood is completely foreign to me and maybe even other non-Americans.  I could be wrong.  I mean, take a look at my parents.  Not only did they NOTsave my baby teeth or hair, but have thrown a lot away.  Not just MY artifacts, but their own as well.  My parents don’t keep anything, their house is the most immaculate piece of art I’ve ever seen.  There isn’t a single piece of paper out of place, much less an occasional baby tooth laying around.

I am pretty sure that as soon as I moved out of their house, in my very old age of 21, the very same day they packed up all my crap and threw it away.  They don’t even wait for neighborhood garage or yard sales, they just throw everything out.  Their garage looks like someone’s living room, you literally could live in it, it is that clean.  The other day I was rummaging through their garage looking for my old journals and books.  I didn’t find either of those things, however I did find a nice collection of classic books…  all in Russian.  They literally filled a giant boat FULL of Russian books when we immigrated here.  Nothing else, just books.  I am not sure if some genius told them that in America, people will pay millions for those books or what…

So, as you can tell my views on saving baby’s foreskin, locks of hair and other artifacts is a bit skewed, although per my husband’s request I have been saving my kids’ first teeth and hair since they were babies.  Only for him to throw it all away ten years later when he found strange hair, teeth and what looked like the remains of an animal that died from suffocation, at the bottom of a plastic container titled “KIDS CRAP”…