The Tooth Fairy returns...

The other night Daniel, my eldest, shed another tooth with a gappy grin. He has recently declared his lack of belief in tooth fairies, and so it was with an intelligent smirk that he placed it under the very centre of his pillow.


I suggested he put it a little closer to the edge because it makes it a bit easier for the poor old fairy to reach.

He laughed.

I laughed.

I went downstairs and left him to sleep.

Later that night I popped in to do my duty – only…

I couldn’t find the tooth. I carefully searched but it was nowhere to be found. What had the little idiot done with it?

I’ll tell you what he did with it!

As I was feeling around under his pillow I noticed something odd in his hand. In the dim light I started to work out what the loon had attempted to do.

My son had set a trap.

A Tooth Fairy trap.

Daniel had used sticky tape to fix a piece of string to his finger. The string went up his arm, inside his pyjama sleeve, and out of the neck of his top poked the other end of the string – with something wrapped up in a huge blob of tape.

I’d found the tooth.

In my son’s head, any attempt to remove the tape would pull at his finger and wake him. Daniel was all set to catch himself a fairy.

Unfortunately I couldn’t quite see where the string was going yet and couldn’t be certain about what he had done – so I called in reinforcements – mainly because this was something that my wife absolutely had to see for herself.

I considered leaving him exactly as he was and then explaining in the morning that the fairy isn’t that stupid and so had left him to it.

I considered attempting to swap the tooth for a coin in its place, without waking him – which would surely have amazed him in the morning.

The thing that I was most tempted to do was to hunt for a doll of some kind – make it look like a fairy and then tangle it up round the neck in the string. Maybe have a little bag in its hand full of coins and teeth. In the morning Daniel would think that he had managed to not just trap – but seemingly kill the tooth Fairy. It was tempting, I can tell you.

As it was, I knew that as I’d seen the string, I couldn’t leave it there. The danger of it tangling around his own neck was all too scary. So we woke him up and untangled him – while affecting the fastest switch ever made. He told me the tooth was at the end of the string – I showed him that in fact it wasn’t. He screwed up his face, but I repeated that the tooth was simply not there.

Swiftly he turned and lifted his pillow, gasping in sheer disbelief at the shiny coin glinting at him.

It was a nice try son – but I’m afraid I’m just too good, and it looks like you are going to have to wait a bit longer to be absolutely certain!