By the time my boy was three months old he had four teeth in his big ol’ baby head. My wife and I were surprised by his advanced teeth-growing skills, but that was just a sign of things to come. As time progressed he developed advanced screaming, projectile vomiting, cursing/profanity, throwing, reading, map analysis, and nuclear physics skills. (Lucky for us a few of those skills have been lost and forgotten.) Now at the ripe old age of four he is perfecting his advanced teeth growing knowledge by pushing out his baby teeth and replacing them with big boy teeth. Yes, my boy has lost his first tooth!

Yesterday the tooth that has been hanging on for dear life fell out. It’s a cute little tooth, and I, the Tooth Fairy, can honestly make that statement without any obvious bias. I swiped the tooth from under the boy’s pillow in the dark of night and replaced it with a dollar. The best part was when we woke up this morning the boy excitedly told his mother and me that the Tooth Fairy came last night and left him a dollar. He went on to tell us that he folded the dollar and stuffed it into his piggy bank so he wouldn’t lose it. For a father who is concerned about the financial future of his family hearing such a statement made me smile like I never thought I could on an early Saturday morning.

The only problem here is that he has inherited some really crappy teeth genes from my side of the family. Our teeth suck. It’s like we’re English. At the age of 18 I endured the shocking discovery of 16 cavities; I’m not lying. It took months to fix them. I’ve been at the dentist four or five times a year ever since. My dentists always said “clearly you take care of your teeth with brushing and flossing because you have very little plaque. Your problem is genetic.” My poor kid is going to have his adult teeth longer than most, which means that he’ll have the challenge of keeping them healthy longer than most. Good thing we have a decent dental plan!