My youngest son Sean turned 20 this week, so I've been dipping into the Father Knows Nothing archives to pull out some of my old columns about Sean. This one narrowly missed the cut for the book, but it will always be one of my favorites...
Sean had been
harboring some suspicions about whether or not the tooth fairy really existed.
“Dad,” he said, totally seriously, “I
noticed that your pile of gold dollars is gone. What happened to it?”
“We spent them all,” I said,
truthfully.
“So, we have ZERO gold dollars in this
house right now?”
“That’s right.”
“And the banks are closed, right?”
“Right.”
“Well,” he said, exposing his smile,
and pointing to the new hole where a tooth had just come out, “I guess we’re
finally going to find out the truth tonight.”
“The truth about what?” I asked.
“The tooth fairy.”
“How?”
“Well,” he reasoned, “Every other time
the tooth fairy has come, there was a pile of gold dollars in the kitchen. How
could I know for sure if it was really the tooth fairy leaving me a gold
dollar, or if it was YOU!”
He pointed as he accused.
“Me? What am I going to do with a used
tooth?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his finger
still pointing. “But I’ve got my eye on you. Now that I know you don’t have any
gold dollars in the house, and that the bank is closed so you can’t get any
more, I’ll know. If I wake up in the
morning and a gold dollar is there, the tooth
fairy is real. I’ll let my friends know. We’ve been talking about it at
school.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
The next morning he came to the
breakfast table with his toothless grin. “Dad,” he said. “I want you to swear
on the Bible that you didn’t go to the bank last night and get some more gold
dollars.”
“I swear,” I answered truthfully. “The
bank was closed.”
“Then we have our answer,” he said.
“The tooth fairy is real.”
When his big brothers rolled their
eyes, he pounced. “It’s true! There’s no way Mom or Dad could have gotten a
gold coin under my pillow because they don’t even have gold coins in the house
right now. There’s no question about it. The tooth fairy is real. Right, Dad?”
“Sounds like you’ve got some pretty
airtight evidence there,” I said.
Sean looked me right in the eye. “You
know, Dad, I’m going to tell my friends that this is true now. Is there
anything else you’d like to say to me before I go to school? One last chance?”
It took all of my earthly restraint not
to smile. He was letting me know in no uncertain terms that his credibility was
at stake here, and he’d never forgive me if I led him astray.
What would you have done?
I just smiled, patted him on the head,
and walked away.
