The Toothfairy is a slacker

by Stephanie Root
Mountain Home News
The Tooth Fairy has been a failure in our house. I'm not sure what has happened with her. The Easter Bunny and Santa Claus both do their job very well in our home, but that dang fairy just can't seem to get the job done correctly.
Just this weekend she was supposed to stop by and pick up one of my eight-year-old's tiny little front teeth. I even had a word with her when this one got super wiggly reminding her that she has been slacking and needed to be on the ball this time.
She promised she would do a better job, but low and behold my son woke up very upset on Monday morning because once again she had passed our house. Usually he puts his tooth in a little tooth bag made just for this occasion, but on Sunday night he just laid it on the mattress under his pillow. He decided that must be why she missed it.
This situation with the Tooth Fairy didn't begin with my son, she has been letting us down since my 14 year old daughter first started losing her teeth years ago and it has not improved much.
There have been many excuses from her over the years: the tooth fell out late enough that she was already out making her rounds and did not get alerted to the tooth at our house, we forgot to leave a way for her to get into the house, my daughter's room was so messy she couldn't enter safely and one time my son's best friend Charlie, our lab, scared her and tried to make her a midnight snack thinking she was some type of bug.
She has done a lot over the years to try to make it up to my children and things have seemed to improve slightly, but this is still unacceptable behavior. The Tooth Fairy is supposed to be a professional and she really has not taken her job responsibilities seriously around here. There was one time when she literally forgot to stop by for my daughter's tooth three nights in a row. Call it being absentminded, being overworked or just plain tired from there being a newborn in the home, but that was just too much to take. By the time that fairy finally came and picked up her cargo interest had gotten so high that my kid ended up receiving over four times what she would normally make for a tooth.
Extra money being accumulated because of the unfortunate circumstances or not, I do not see this as something that will fade from memory very soon. I think it will end up being one of those lasting stories in our home "How the Tooth Fairy Failed the Roots." It will be talked about at family gatherings and holiday meals by my children for years to come. And I know for a fact that if for some reason she fails my grandchildren, the way she has my children, their parents will be very quick to point out that she never managed to pick up their teeth on time when they were growing up.
Now our editorial section is not a place where I would normally call someone out so individually and so publicly, but her lack of work ethic and pride in her work is something that needs to be pointed out. And who knows, maybe this will help another family realize they are not alone in this issue with her or perhaps she will finally step up and do her job correctly at the Root house before we run out of teeth for her to collect.