My husband’s 5-year-old grandson recently lost his first tooth, and we were amazed to hear that the tooth fairy left a $5.00 bill under his pillow. I told him, “Wow, when I was your age, I got a dime!” to which he replied, “What’s a dime?”
After that exchange, I just had to turn to our class Facebook group to see what kind of memories some of you had of the tooth fairy and her largesse. There were plenty of us in the dime group: Cindy Burke Elder, Linda McEndree Jackson, Rita Mulholland Yeager, Lynn Umpleby Fuentes, Patricia Schneider Mannor, Monique Scanio Doherty, Mary Martin Covell, and Dale Withers Peck. Barbara DeHart Eadie got a dime but “sometimes the tooth fairy forgot!” Others may have started with a dime, but for unexplored reasons got upgraded to a quarter: Bobbi Thayer Kirtland, Barbara Eldridge Henry, Robert Berning, Colleen McLean Calver, and Sharon Ralph Gingras, who said, “I thought that was a big deal.” Sara Stubbins scored a dollar once. And the tooth fairy really came through for Marianne Meyer Behler: “As an only child, I guess I was spoiled. I got a silver dollar.” Then she added, “I remember trading it in for a real dollar so I could spend it.” Ouch!
Sam Swisher, a financial planner, saw the $5.00 windfall as an opportunity for a teachable moment and gave some advice on how to do that—which conceivably might start with introducing your 5-year-old to a dime. A couple of grandmothers commented on what some modern day kids are getting. The going rate for Margaret House Conger’s grandchildren is $2.00 and in the home of one of Rich and Bobbi Thayer Kirtland’s offspring, the grandkids get $5.00 a tooth. However, one got $10.00 last time because “the tooth fairy didn’t have a five!”
Shirley Bauer Varney had the last word on this subject: “Oh!! Was there a tooth fairy?”
Comments