The Tooth Story: Reprise

The thing that was not quite true
was that she cannot
treasure her tooth
always,
because
guess what?

She lost it at school that day.

What is with the Zook family losing things? Forget the dish ran away with the spoon. Someone should write a story about a potted plant and a small white tooth vanishing into the void together, in pursuit of a couple of very fine iced coffees.

I am secretly suspicious that the on-campus ick-factor-police removed my daughter’s treasure at some point, but it is possible that in her showings-off, she lost it onto the floor, where it would be far from conspicuous among the small shards of a school day. We will never know.

Everything else is verified history, down to the magic string and the lightly greased donuts, because although those were some excellent fact-checking catches, I call them perspective… Except for one thing. The Daddy in the story told me after my publication a detail I had not heard before: that, in fact, the magic string failed to exactly pull the tooth after several tries, slipping off in a most oily fashion, so he used the magic fingers instead. It was still an easy pull, just hard to catch hold of the little nipper. So there was one thing purposely untrue and one thing accidentally untrue. Heigh-ho. We approach complete truth; we do not attain it.

Your ideas were genuinely creative and funny. I loved reading them. Just know that when you write again, I’ll be happy to see it.

The little tooth keeper is empty now, but it is still awfully nice.

And we made a good story together. A keeper for sure.

Like her Daddy.

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Sheila
6 months ago

What? The Happily Ever After wasn’t true?

In one genius stroke of the pen, you have rendered me Deeply Suspicious of all those other fairy tales written by people like Charles Perrault or Karyn Pervis.

Julie
6 months ago

I also kept thinking about your comment a story or two back, that if you were Karyn Purvis this wouldn’t have happened and I wanted to say that I believe her, when she says this is what to do, but the problem is that she, like so many other brilliant and highly experienced people, knew what to do and didn’t realize half of what she was doing. And also those of us watching probably have a hard time approaching the mindset she carried, which had at least half the impact, without actually walking with her and talking to her and seeing how it all happened time and time again. And having our own experiences over and over and over again.

I have no doubt that sometime you will regularly have instant and immense impact and you will have a very hard time explaining exactly what happened to anyone else without unintentionally telling only a very small sort of the story.

Frieda
6 months ago

What a great story! I was so impressed with “the diligence your husband displayed in searching for the tooth, finding it AND taking it to the school for her.” Nonetheless, this was a great story!

6 months ago

Oh I would be terrified to have a tooth yanked out with string.😄 She’s a brave little sweetie.

Katrina
6 months ago

I would not have guessed this in a million years. 😂

6 months ago

Some weeks ago my second daughter lost teeth as well. Then my older daughter showed her teeth to her and while comparing them they mixed them up. Now there is the right amount of teeth in each box but we do not know to which one is which.

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