Primo lost his first tooth.
Pause for applause and fanfare.
Yes, it’s very exciting. Particularly because we were about to pay about 400 buckaroos to get it pulled. You see, his new, permanent tooth had actually already grown in, fully, behind the baby tooth. My son had two teeth in the place where one should be. It was kind of freaky but of course we just acted like it was cool and no big deal, because we didn't want to give the kid a complex. Still and all, that extra tooth had to come out, and the dentist said the sooner the better. He also said it’d cost $200 per tooth, plus anther $200 for nitrus oxide, which he didn’t recommend for all kids, but would probably be a good idea for a child who started to panic when the dentist turned on the light overhead to look in his mouth.
“If he freaked out about the light, what the hell is he going to do when he sees a needle coming directly towards his mouth?” I asked David, “We need the nitrus.”
So imagine my reaction when a few days before the appointment, the tooth started to get really wiggly. We began a relentless wiggling campaign, and two days before the appointment, I informed Primo that it was time to move into “Heavy-Duty” wiggling.
“Let’s get sub-gingival!” I exclaimed. A few years ago, a dentist said this to me and it has become one of my favorite phrases to employ, though, as you can imagine, I rarely get the opportunity.
My heavy-duty wiggling strategy worked, and later that day, after dinner, he was wiggling when suddenly he just pulled his tooth right out of his mouth. No force was required. He just popped it out, like a Lego.
“I think my tooth fell out!”
I doubted him, of course, because the thing he was holding between his fingers was so tiny, so terribly minute, there was no way it would be a human tooth. A mouse tooth perhaps, or a beetle tooth, but not nearly big enough for a human boy’s mouth.
Just goes to show you how adept I am at estimating size (sorry, husband). It was of course, his tiny, darling $400 tooth. Never was such jubilation heard over the loss of a tooth. My pride and sentimentality were mixed with the sound of “Cha Ching!” depositing my money right back in my checking account. It was lovely.
The Tooth Fairy was ready to compensate Primo very generously for his first tooth, but then her husband talked some sense into her, and explained that as the kid has 20 something teeth, it was best to establish a reasonable precedent. The next morning, Primo was delighted to find $3 in a pouch under his pillow.
Only problem is, the X-ray the dentist took showed that another permanent tooth is about to break out behind the tooth next-door. So we’ve had to re-allocate the funds again, and begin our wiggling work. When my grandmother found out how much it costs to pull a tooth, she offered to take care of it with a little string and a heavy door. Now THAT’s getting sub-gingival.
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