Just a Dollar

When I opened my eyes this morning, something felt weird. I sat up and looked around for the reason - my Hello Kitty bedspread had wrapped itself into a tight wad overnight like it always did, toys and clothes were strewn all over the floor, and I could hear mom in the kitchen downstairs making breakfast. Just a typical Saturday morning by the looks of it. It wasn't until I took a drink from the cup on my bedstand that it hit me: the water went gushing past my tender upper gum through the gap in my teeth, and it was so startling, I almost choked to death. Then I could harldy contain my excitement because my room had been visited by the tooth fairy, and I felt like I was sitting in the presence of residual greatness.

With my heart pounding and head spinning, I lifted my pillow wondering what sort of magical gift I had received. What I found, however, was no sparkling golden coin from another world; it was just an everyday dollar. It wasn't even a nice, new dollar, it was dogeared and wanted to stand up in a "V" shape like the bills that came out of my dad's wallet.

I stuffed the dollar into my bank and scanned the room one last time for anything sparkling before trudging downstairs and flopping into one of the chairs at the table.

"Good morning," my mom said. "Did the tooth fairy visit you last night?"

"More like the tooth recycling service," I said. "I got a dollar, but there was nothing magical about it."

My mom laughed. "Were you expecting something else?"

Of course I had been. A fairy had visited my room last night. I just shrugged and looked down at the table.

"Well, maybe she'll bring you something else next time," she said. "Maybe she'll leave some fairy dust in your room. Would you like that?"

I nodded and picked at the scrambled eggs she'd just set in front of me.

"Except how will she know to leave it? And how did she even get a dollar into my room? It's probably bigger than she is."

"Magic?" my mom suggested.

It seemed like a reasonable explanation, but the whole experience was still strange and disappointing. I'm not going to say I don't believe in fairies (because we all know the consequences of that), but I now consider myself a skeptic and am working hard at loosening my next tooth to find out what happens when she visits again.