I should say that a calendar could have saved the Tooth Fairy!

It all started last night.  My 9 year old daughter announced that she had lost a tooth while eating dinner.  It’s been loose for weeks.  Later that evening as my daughter was ready for bed and just coming up to have me tuck her in, she was very excited about that fact that she had put the tooth under her pillow and was wondering how much the Tooth Fairy would give her for this tooth.

This is where I made my critical mistake.  In that moment, I thought,

“I can’t put money under the pillow until after she falls asleep but I’m going to forget.  I should put this in my calendar so I get reminded around 9:30pm.”

But I didn’t.  I somehow convinced myself that I would remember.  I should know better.

This morning, my daughter was a bit groggy.  After breakfast, she went back down stairs to finish getting ready for bed, brush her teeth, make her bed, etc.  Not much time went by before she came back down the stairs, crying,

“I lost my tooth when I was making my bed and the Tooth Fairy didn’t bring me any money!”

“Oh, no!”, I thought.  I forgot!  What am I going to do!  Do I tell her the reality that there is no Tooth Fairy in order to explain what happened?  Is there any way to recover?  Luckily, I think pretty quick on my feet.

I told her to grab her backpack so it’s ready for school and that I’d go look in her room to see what was up.  I needed a distraction so I could look in my purse for a few coins.  She left the room.  I looked in my purse.  ALL PENNIES!  What am I going to do!?  Ah!  A quarter and a nickel.  I can work with that.  The Tooth Fairy has never been very generous in our house anyway.

I went downstairs. Her bed was made perfectly as usual.  I dropped the coins down on the floor between her bed and the wall.  Just then, she came in.

“Hey, I see some coins down here on the floor.  Were they there before?  Or do you think they are from the Tooth Fairy and you accidentally knocked them down there in your sleep?”

“Let me look!  No!  That money is from the Tooth Fairy!  And my tooth is right there, too!

I didn’t see the tooth when I dropped the money.  I’ll call that a gift.  Phew!

So I recovered but the moral of this story is:  when it’s critical to remember something, especially something that needs to be done at a critical time, put it in your calendar!