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While My Boyfriend Was Sleeping

What I write after Joe and Henry go to bed

There’s fairy dust on my keyboard.

March 30, 2009 by heidi 6 Comments

My mother told me this when she and my dad were out visiting last week. It was the first time I’d heard this story and I thought it explained a great deal everything:

When I was about five years old, I moseyed into my bedroom with an ice cream come. You know the type that come in a big store-bought box? The kind that go stale in 10 minutes if you don’t roll down the packaging immediately after opening?

Those kind of cones.

I loved them even without ice cream scooped on top. They were a nice cardboard-flavored snack.

I reckon biting into stale ice cream cones is a fine way to hurry along loose teeth and considering I was fairly cash-strapped at five, gnawing on these things until teeth fell out was probably a small price to pay for dividends from the Bank of Tooth Fairy.

So yes, on this particular day I lost a tooth. And when I woke up in the morning and the tooth was gone from under my pillow and a dollar bill was in its place, I noticed that cone crumbs were in my bed and on my floor in a trail leading out the door.

“MOM!” I yelled. “COME HERE!”

Pointing to the crumbs, oblivious to where they’d come from, I explained that the tooth fairy must have left dust in my room.

My mother, amused and well aware of my sloppy eating habits, let me believe the crumbs were fairy dust and entertained my request for a sandwich baggie so I could bring them to kindergarten class that morning for show and tell.

A few days later, when my teacher saw my mother, she said, “Nice touch with the tooth fairy stuff. Crumbling up food and calling it fairy dust. Cute.”

My mother replied, “It wasn’t me, Kathy. She walked into her bedroom that day with an ice cream cone and dropped crumbs all over her bed. When she woke up in the morning she was convinced they’d come from the tooth fairy.”

Thank you Mom, for letting me believe in things like this. I love you.

—

PS. That’s me up there in the pumpkin patch, showing off my baby teeth.

Filed Under: ice cream, kiddos, kindergarten, love, mom, mushy anecdotes, North Collins, story scooping

Comments

  1. Tabitha (From Single to Married) says

    March 31, 2009 at 7:05 am

    cute story! It is a good idea for future reference. I’ll have to remember that one!

  2. mothership says

    April 1, 2009 at 6:28 am

    The innocense of a child shows adults the value of simple pleasures. We often forget to keep an open mind, to set our imaginations free and allow our hearts to guide us along seeing all that’s good about life, verses focusing on the small percentage of what’s bad. Take time out to enjoy the moments and pass along a few smiles for they are contagious and feel wonderful when returned. My 3 girls are my 3loves, forever a part of my life. I can’t even begin to imagine not having all these precious memories of times past and all the new ones still yet to be made. Smiling the biggest smile as I say I love you too.

  3. C.Flower says

    April 1, 2009 at 6:37 am

    Mom!

    You made me cry!

    Dammit.

    Big alligator tears too.

  4. Delilah + Jack says

    April 3, 2009 at 3:45 pm

    Mothership retains much wisdom….cute 🙂

    In response to your question…I am from Guelph…it is about an hour outside Toronto. It is a university town full of hippy tree-huggers, vet students and Aggies! It is a very nice place, and has a good music scene. It is Just big enough but not too big. I can always go into TO if I need to experience the city every once in awhile.

    You are in St. petersburg? I have been there! My family drove down to Florida [twice]; my older brother was on a baseball scholarship in the states (W. Virginia) but they did spring training in Fort Myer’s. On one of the trips we took a ten hour detour to go to Graceland because my mom is obsessed with Elvis. It was interesting to say the least, hehehehe!

    By the way, thanks for following the blog!!!

    -Delilah

  5. C.Flower says

    April 4, 2009 at 10:31 am

    D+J: Thank you for following Lance!

    Fort Myers isn’t far from Sarasota – where I used to live pre-Joe. Spring training in Southwest Fla. is a huge deal to baseball fanatics and city commissions. Sarasota has been trying to woo the Red Sox for MONTHS. It hasn’t worked. They’ll likely end up with the Baltimore Orioles. The humanity!

    One guy was quoted in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune comparing the Red Sox to Brad Pitt and the Orioles to David Hasselhoff. When Baltimore fans got wind of this, they went bananas.

    Hippie tree hugger towns serve the best food. What are Aggies?

  6. Brandy says

    January 5, 2011 at 10:48 am

    A dollar, WOW!!!!!! I got nickels and dimes, and the occasional quarter……. That’s awesome though, very sweet

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