Dear Tooth Fairy,

It's taken me an entire week to work up the courage to tell my son's tooth story. And I'm making no promises that tears might be shed, again, as I re-live that day here. Lucky me, you won't know since you can't see my makeup dripping down my face. Lucky you.

This is certainly the Cliffs’ Notes version, because no one wants details, right? Right. Moving on… Brandon was scheduled to have another pulpotomy on his tooth last Friday. Since I cried more than he did at the first one, I appointed Dad to take him from now until the end of the Earth. Well, circumstances aside – coupled with the fact that my husband decided to flatten a tire in the pouring rain, lightening and thunder with no proper tools to change such tire all while running late to the dentist – Mom had to take Brandon. Great. I might as well smear my mascara all over my face right now and get it over with.

Brandon’s all hoisted up in his chair, mouth pried open by gargantuan and equally as scary metal equipment, and the dental assistant and I are chatting it up. Then I see another dental assistant fetching tools for the dentist. Since the dentist is wearing her protective mask, all I hear from her is similar to Charlie Brown’s “Waa Waa Waa Waa…” And then, some extremely frightening tools are being laid onto the tray.

Me: “Uh, what are you going to do with THAT?”

The assistant looks at me like I’m crazy. I glance at the dentist. I glance at the other assistant. The dentist glances at me. The dentist glances at the assistant. The assistant glances at me.

We’re all looking at each other, but no one’s saying a word.

Me: “Did I miss something? What are you doing?”

Dentist pulls down her face mask: “There’s nothing left on that tooth. We’ll have to do an extraction.”

My heart stops.

Brandon hasn’t lost any teeth yet. He’s still got a mouth full of itsy bitsy teeth that were there six years ago when he joined us on this planet. I feel like I’m cheating him to have this be his first tooth-losing experience – being yanked out by some ominous, steel, icepick look-a-like contraption.

Well, I cried. I sobbed. All the memories of having teeth pulled when I was younger were more fresh in my mind than ever. I knew exactly what he was going through, and I couldn’t take it.

The screaming, the crying, hearing my son say, “Stop hurting me!” I am not an emotionally-strong person. I cry at ev-er-y-thing. Doctor’s appointments, school drop-offs, boo-boos, blood, tears, all of it. I cry. So what’s the first thing I do when I see my husband two hours later?

I punched him in the arm as hard as I could and told him I was mad at him for making me do that. And then I showed him the tooth.



And I think he may have even cried a little bit, too. THEN, I felt better.