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Uncovering the Tooth Fairy | StarTalk


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

So, Tooth Fairy is an interesting dilemma when you're a parent. Because right when they're losing teeth, they're supremely gullible. They'll believe basically anything you tell them, because they don't have their own sense of the world yet. Their understanding filters through what you deliver to them as a parent, as a trusting parent.

So, the two of us, we're sitting there, saying, "What do we do about their lost two teeth?" So here's what we did: They lose a tooth and say, "Mommy, Daddy, what should I do with our two?" Here's what we did: We said, "We heard that if you put it under your pillow, a Tooth Fairy comes and swaps it out with money."

We heard this, we're not sure about that. Okay, they said, "Okay," then they did that. So they put it over an envelope under the pillow. The next morning, there's money there. So, "Look, Mommy, Daddy, the Tooth Fairy came!"

And so, I asked them, "How do you know?" They said, "Oh, well, there's money there." I said, "Okay, but how do you know it was a Tooth Fairy?" And so, they're my kids. For every next tooth, they would rig an apparatus in their room to detect things that might come in their room overnight.

They put aluminum foil on the grounds, because you could hear that crinkle if somebody walks in, and they started rigging all of this. Then, at school, they organized a Tooth Fairy experiment. Someone had the idea that maybe it was the parents who are the Tooth Fairy.

Okay, so how do you test that? Here's how you test it: Anybody whose tooth came out in school, you do not tell your parents about it. You then put that tooth under your pillow and see what happens.

And so, the next kids whose tooth came out, they did this, and the next morning, it was still a tooth. So, they busted the Tooth Fairy legend. They got to turn a Tooth Fairy fantasy into a scientific experiment. I don't have a problem with that. And at no time did I say there's no Tooth Fairy. They figured it out. That's how we deal with the Tooth Fairy in my household.

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