Shifting The Blame

Ane lost another tooth last Thursday morning.  Our dentist, Dr. S., told us at her last appointment that her top canines had to come out before school started.  That appointment was on the last day of school, and it has taken this long (and the constant threat of having to go back to Dr. S. before school started to get those teeth pulled) for them to finally come out – with Tad’s help.  A little rough-and-tumble, a knee to your sister’s mouth, and voila! – teeth come out.  The reason the teeth had to come out is because the adult teeth were already coming in and had no place to go.  Ane is a walking ad for orthodonture.

With all of the hoopla on Thursday of Tad’s kid party, plus the fact that Ane had lost the tooth early that morning and then said nothing about it for the rest of the day, it totally slipped my mind that we needed to arrange for the Tooth Fairy to pay Ane a visit.

I remembered it the next morning when Ane came bursting into the master bedroom, yelling “WHAT HAPPENED?!??!” and holding her tooth box that still had a tooth in it.

I told her I didn’t know what happened, but that I would find out.  Then I lay in bed trying to figure out how on earth I could remedy this one.  For some reason, the Webmaster seemed unperturbed about the whole thing – probably because he knew I’d already shifted into overdrive to try and solve this.

For a while, I contemplated calling Auntie, asking her to have one of her friends call me on my cell and pretend to be the Tooth Fairy, but that scheme seemed complicated.  I debated telling Ane that if the Tooth Fairy doesn’t show up, it just means that there were too many teeth to pick up in one night, so it would probably happen tonight.  Then it hit me!  I would just do what everyone else does!

I blamed Tad.

“Ane, was Tad in your room this morning when you woke up?” I asked.

“Yeah, he got in my bed and fell asleep again,” said the aggrieved big sister.

“Well, that explains it!”  I told her.  “Obviously, Tad was going into your room at the same time the Tooth Fairy showed up, and you know that she can’t be seen by kids, so Tad must have accidentally scared her off!  I’m sure she’ll get your tooth tonight.”

Ane glared at her unsuspecting brother.  “I knew this was your fault,” she muttered.

Yes, I did feel guilty about blaming Tad, but let’s keep remembering what’s important here: I saved my own hide.  Oh, and Ane still believes in the Tooth Fairy.

I did ‘fess up to Ressis and my mother, though.  My mother scolded me for blaming Tad, but then said, “I forgot about the Tooth Fairy once, too.”

“Yeah,” I said, “with me, when I was about seven.”

“Oh.”  Mom paused.  “Then maybe I forgot more than once.”

It happens to us all.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 at 1:16 am and is filed under Children, Mommyhood.
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