Tooth fairy - Ponderings on - by Leon the Huguenot

Many of you will have seen a recent description of how Father Christmas, Santa Claus or what you will, is able to accomplish his mammoth task every Christmas Eve.  I think it requires him to travel at above the speed of light.  Otherwise, it all seemed very scientific so I guess I have to accept it.  How else could it happen?

I did not think any more about it until my six year old son lost an incisor tooth a few days ago.  The tooth fairy duly came and left him two dollars for it.  As he was clutching his two dollars the next day he asked:  “Dad, how come the tooth fairy was able to get in.  We had everything locked.”

Well, I said something like “She probably comes down the chimney like Father Christmas”.  You know, the sort of thing you say to a child to shut him or her up.  He seemed satisfied with that explanation, but I was not.  I knew the house had been locked; the chimney was blocked by an internal combustion stove (not burning at the time); and the security system had been switched on.  I did not mention my doubts to my son of course.  You have to maintain their beliefs.  But I have to confess that I, a fifty year old well-educated male, could not explain how the damn tooth fairy had got in either.

Then I wondered why the tooth fairy actually wants teeth.  My son had a ready explanation.  “She is using teeth to build her house,” he said, in that old, wise manner of a six year old.  Well, if that’s so she’s been doing that for at least fifty years.  What sort of a mansion has she got now - and at what enormous cost?

I did a rough calculation - you know, the sort those people did with the Santa Claus paradox.  There are, at any one time, around two hundred million children at the teeth shedding stage.  On any one day maybe a hundred thousand teeth are shed - and that’s pretty conservative.  At two dollars each that’s - that’s two hundred thousand dollars.  If she’s being doing this for the last fifty years, say, that’s about $350 million she’s spent on her house.  Bill Gates has nothing on her!

What sort of building material would teeth make?  Probably rather good but a bit fiddly.  You can’t imagine your average brickies’ labourer fooling around with teeth, adding teaspoonfuls of mortar, and setting them in place.  But it explains why she has been collecting them for at least fifty years.  You’d only get the equivalent of one decent sized building block out of a night’s harvest.  Can’t she go to a brick factory like anyone else?  Imagine approaching a building society for a loan to build a house out of teeth!  Maybe you wouldn’t have to disclose it to them but how about council approval?  Imagine the council building inspector:  “I’m afraid you just haven’t allowed for enough teeth in that section to support the load.”

I wondered why an incisor was worth $2.  Some have told me tricuspids and bicuspids are worth less but I should think they’d be more useful than incisors as building materials.  Are fluoridated teeth worth more than non-fluoridated - or is the other way around?  Don’t let’s start on that controversy.

And what about exchange rates,  Does a German child (and, I am assured by German colleagues, that the tooth fairy also operates in their parts) get the equivalent of $2 in Deutschmarks?   The French child in francs?  And what happens in situations of rampant inflation as use to obtain in parts of Indonesia.  Did a tooth which, yesterday, fetched 10 rupiah now fetch 100 or 1000? 

What if my child decides not to sell his tooth to the tooth fairy?  Can he choose to sell to the tooth goblin - if there is such a thing (I have not heard of one)?  Is this monopoly market situation, analogous to the trade in diamonds, a healthy thing for the economy?

Finally, it seems the tooth fairy is not interested in adult teeth.  I have a few I’d like to cash in and they are probably the only bits of me now of any value.  Gums are all right for chewing pasta; I call them the “Gums of Navarone”.  Sorry about that.  I’ve been wanting to use that for years. 

I left a tooth out a few months ago - in the regulation tooth fairy container - and it was still there the next morning.  What is the cut-off age?  Is the tooth fairy, and I shudder to think this, ageist?