The Dictator, the Idiot Tooth Fairy, and Me

This might not have been the first time I've done it.

"Gappy," as we like to call the toothless
Dictator. For some reason she abhors
this name. She also doesn't want her
picture taken..."because it's
emBARrasing!" So I tickled her
while she was snacking on pretzels
(yes, that's chewed up pretzel in her
mouth), snapped a pic, and posted
it on my blog for all to see.
Have I mentioned that I'm a bad parent?

My precious Dictator came skipping home from school two days ago clutching a plastic sandwich bag with a big grin on her face. "Guess what, Mommy?!" She thrusts the bag in my face and I catch a glimpse of a tiny, bloody canine tooth. Then she grins and jams her face up against my eyes so that my eyelashes mash into her mouth. "Do you see?! I lost another TOOTH! And Makayla says it's a LUCKY tooth because it's POINTY! I'll probably even get EXTRA money tonight!" (The Dictator is nothing if not mercenary). I make a note of it in my head. Must not forget tooth fairy tonight. This is important. Because I've forgotten before. 

The good news, in our family, is that we've already established that the tooth fairy is pretty much a moron. We have a saying: "You can rely on Santa Claus. You can count on the Easter Bunny. But the tooth fairy is all like 'Blahahahahah!"  

Really. We actually go around saying that. The last part sounds like ditzy, flaky, confused blonde exclamations. We're just a house full of dorks, really. 

But this time, I'm not going to forget. I write reminder notes to myself everywhere. I set an alarm on my phone. This is important. 

So naturally, I fall asleep on the couch while the Bureaucrat is out doing social-person things that night. I wake up in a sleepy stupor at 1 am, stumble upstairs and fall into bed. I sleep peacefully, dreaming about alien takeovers, kindergarten classrooms, and lattes...obviously. And in the morning...

"Mom! The tooth fairy FORGOT AGAIN!" 

Yup. Again. 

But don't worry. This is the Dictator we're talking about. She knows who she's dealing with. Tooth fairies are all like "Blahahahah!" They're morons. They need patience, guidance, and most of all, passive-aggressive letters.

"Because when I woke up, like four times to see if you had come--you thoughtless, insensitive harpy--it was still there...because you're inconsiderate, self-absorbed and slow in the head!"

"And even though my tooth is very small, it's still there...MORON!"

The Bureaucrat said that he recently read somewhere that the phrase "please advise" is business speak for WTF. As in, "We still haven't received those documents. Please advise." I think that if the Dictator had been aware of this useful bit of business info, "Please RSVP" would most certainly have read "please advise," and would even more certainly have implied something which, as this is a PG rated blog, is unrepeatable here.

Anyway, the problem was resolved quickly, as the repentant fairy immediately deposited a double sum of tooth reward money (a guilt offering) the following night. And thusly, the passive-aggressive wrath of the Dictator was satiated by cold hard cash.

Guilt offering. Nice and blurry so you won't
notice that the blithering idiot fairy
committed a federal offense by defacing
federal currency with an apologetic,
pink "oops!"

Fairies might be dumb as dirt, but at least they're easily manipulated. And that's all the Dictator ever really asks, anyway.