Baby Teeth

Tiptoeing in, I reached beneath her pillow to exchange her carefully-wrapped tooth with a shiny coin. The transaction would please her (Oh, the candy she could buy now!), but I had a quandary. Those little gnashers, like first steps, were momentous. It seemed callous to toss them out. So I secretly saved them all, till I realized that was kind of icky. What was I going to do, make a necklace for her Sweet Sixteen? That would cement her cool in the eyes of her friends. And so, I dumped them, un-commemorated and uncelebrated. Better callous, I decided, than icky. 

Inspired by Gap Kid. Image by Oxana Zaytseva.