Fairies

'This is my tooth-fairy box,' said six-year-old K, holding up a pink heart-shaped china jewellery box with white frosting-like edging. 'And last night the tooth fairy gave me this...'; she proudly displayed a two dollar coin.

K's tone and the expression on her face left no doubt that tooth fairies and their business were serious subjects. 'Our cousin doesn't believe in tooth fairies. But he hasn't lost any teeth for a long time, so he can't be right.' Apparently, they're controversial too. After K asked the customary 'Any questions or statements?', ten minutes of earnest tooth-fairy talk followed.

J offered the following: 'I know that the tooth fairy is real, because once, when she came, she left a message on my mum's mobile phone.' Tech-savvy tooth fairy!

'I know that she's real because once I felt her wings flapping,' another member of the pro-tooth-fairy lobby said. 'Yeah, and once she wrote me notes saying, "Make sure you brush your teeth," and "Don't forget to smile,"' K chimed in. A tooth fairy with parental biases.

Of course, waiting in the wings were the tooth-fairy skeptics. Demure Z struck: 'I know that the tooth fairy isn't real because once I peeked from under the covers and saw my mum putting it [the money] there." Others similar sightings of parents were held out to dispel the tooth fairy myth. I was worried that, before her own eyes, and before the entire class, K's friendly tooth fairy was being shown to have no clothes.

K didn't miss a beat, 'Yeah, the tooth fairy probably asked your mum to put it there, because she was having a holiday.' Brilliant!
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In other breaking news, yesterday our three-and-a-half-week old daughter found her lungs, i.e. she took to seemingly spontaneous and very hard to control squawking. They say it's normal, but I think I preferred the quiet version.