"Bill and the Tooth Fairy" by Carl Tait
Friends withhold the truth from a 28-year-old man who believes in the tooth fairy.
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"Bill and the Tooth Fairy" by Carl Tait
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Bill believed in the Tooth Fairy.
Big deal, you’re thinking. Lots of kids believe in the Tooth Fairy.
Well, Bill wasn’t a kid. He was twenty-eight years old.
You don’t believe it. My girlfriend Mary Beth didn’t believe it, either. We were having dinner with Bill and his friend Coralee. I guess I should say that Coralee was Bill’s girlfriend, but I can’t quite make myself do that. Coralee was a friendly soul who went places with Bill and tried to make him seem a little less strange than he would have been otherwise. She felt some genuine affection for Bill, but to hear her tell it, she was mainly doing her Christian duty in helping one of God’s odder children feel more comfortable in a world that didn’t seem to fit him very well.
We were having a good dinnertime talk when Bill suddenly brought up the Tooth Fairy.
“Bill, let’s not talk about that,” Coralee said, with an uncharacteristic note of strain in her voice.
“Why not?” asked Bill. “Roy and Mary Beth don’t seem to mind.”
“It’s fine with me,” I said. “Not what I expected to be discussing this evening, but that’s okay.”
Bill smiled. “No bad time to talk about the Tooth Fairy, right?”
“Well, maybe not when you’re at the dentist getting a tooth filled,” answered Mary Beth.
Bill laughed, too loudly. Coralee had tried to coach him on that, but Bill was still prone to raucous laughter over little ha-ha lines that would barely earn a chuckle from most of us.
“You’re right, Mary Beth. Even the Tooth Fairy herself wouldn’t think you should talk about her while you’re getting one of your precious molars repaired.”
Coralee smiled thinly. “And speaking of unpleasant things, I ran into the worst traffic on 285 this morning. Some joker was …”
Bill cut her off. “Now, Coralee, we weren’t done talking about the Tooth Fairy. You know she doesn’t like it when you disrespect her like that.”
“Wait, I’m lost,” said Mary Beth. “Who doesn’t like … what?”
Bill smiled at Mary Beth patiently. “The Tooth Fairy gets real unhappy when you don’t treat her with respect. Like jumping from a good talk about the dentist into some boring story about a traffic jam.”
Coralee’s face went red, but she stayed quiet. She realized the crazy cow had escaped from the barn and there was nothing to do but wait for it to tire itself out.
Mary Beth was still struggling to build a fence around the subject with common sense. She forced a laugh. “Well, I haven’t thought much about the Tooth Fairy since I was nine years old, so I imagine she’s stopped caring about me by this point.”
“Oh, no,” Bill answered with concern. “She cares about you even more now. She already has all of your baby teeth, but she watches you every day. She’s waiting for you to have children and tell them all about her and make sure they leave their teeth for her.”
Mary Beth tried to say something else but failed. I cleared my throat and stepped in gently.
“Bill, are you saying that you still believe in the Tooth Fairy?”
Bill looked at me with horror. “Of course I do! Don’t you? Coralee told me that some people don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy, but I thought she was joking.”
Mary Beth had recovered her ability to speak. “Bill, what do people usually say when you mention the Tooth Fairy?”
“Well, I don’t talk about her that often, since we all know that talking about her too much is just as bad as too little. But when I do mention her, people always smile and laugh. Everyone loves her.”
“But not everyone believes in her,” I said. “In fact, I’ve never met an adult who did.”
Bill’s obese body trembled with agitation. “That’s not true! That can’t be true! How about God? Don’t you believe in God?”
“Sure,” I lied. Actually, I hadn’t believed in God or any other deities for a long time, but I had not found this advisable to announce in the middle of a casual conversation, even in modern-day Atlanta.
“But you can’t see God, so why do you believe in him?”
I paused. “Bill, let’s not get into a religious discussion. Those are for church and for your private thoughts. I just need to know for sure: you honestly believe that the Tooth Fairy is real?”
Bill’s round face was as darkly angry as I’d ever seen it. “Of course I do. Of course I do.”
Coralee touched Bill’s arm gently. “Honey, let’s not talk about this any more right now. Some people don’t like to discuss the Tooth Fairy in public. We all know how mad she can get about that.”
Coralee looked at Mary Beth and me with something approaching desperation. There was silence for a moment. Bill was calming down.
I shifted in my seat. “So, Coralee, what in the heck happened on 285 this morning?”
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