Teeth and Index Cards

If you know anything about me, you'll know that I have about 3.2 million things going on in my brain at any given moment. Looking around my desk right now, I see calendars, post-its, index cards, lists, reminders, planners..... I have a lot going on. The contents of my brain must often be emptied onto any one or number of these recording devices so that things do not vaporize or get stashed under something more current or pressing.

Well, it should then be no surprise that this morning I forgot to switch T's tooth out for a quarter.

*****Tangent: Yes, I said a quarter. Twenty-five cents. My son is FIVE YEARS OLD. There is no fracking reason the kid needs a $5 or even a single dollar bill. He has no expenses, and no opportunity to SPEND any money he has anyway. At one point he had a jar half-full of various coins. He took that jar, emptied it (about $8 worth) into a collection for helping kids with autism. I am proud of my son's philanthropy, but we're still working on the part where he gives, just not EVERYTHING he has.*****

Anyway, so I forgot his quarter. Thankfully, T remembered only after he had done his bed, and while he was doing his morning mouthwash rinse. I told him to finish cleaning his mouth, and asked him if he had any of my laundry in his room. Yeah, real smooth Mom. He said no, but I told him I would check anyway.

*****Tangent: When laundry is done in our house, I put the clean laundry in T's hamper. He then sorts it, folds and hangs his own laundry, and puts my laundry back in the hamper to be delivered to my room. So, while it was strange to ask for my laundry, it wasn't THAT strange.*****

I went to his room, fished out the tooth (which I had taped to a green, easy-to-spot index card) and replaced it with a quarter. A state quarter by the way. Alaska, in case you were curious. He came into his room to tell me something in the middle of it, and I literally threw the card behind his dresser so he wouldn't see it. He went back to the bathroom and I got the card and quarter under his pillow. I went to my room, presumably to find my laundry, then came back to finish packing lunch.

"Mom! Look, a quarter! And it has a picture on it!"

"Cool! And I already have that one, so you get to keep it!"

*****Tangent (I have a lot of tangents): When we use cash (which is not often) we give all of the coin change to T. The ONLY exception is any quarter there might be. All quarters go to the "meter fund." On Tuesday evenings we go to the USO for dinner, and generally get there a bit early so we can be at the front of the line. I don't like to muck around with dimes or nickels, so we just take and use quarters. So... pennies, nickels, and dimes all go to T's piggy bank aka "savings" as he says, and quarters all go to my quarter cup. Oh, except for any state quarters I may be missing from my collection. I am still missing about 11 states and territories before I have all of the state quarters.

SO disaster averted. I didn't have to make any lame excuses as to why the Tooth Faerie might have missed a stop or some such.