Tooth Fairy Hack: My granddaughter’s tooth fetched a fair fee

Good Day World!

The Tooth Fairy stopped by last night and took my granddaughter’s front tooth, leaving a five dollar bill behind in it’s place.

That was one generous tooth fairy because researchers at Visa recently found that the tooth fairy is now leaving an average of $3.70 USD per tooth. Not bad.

As you may know, the tooth fairy is a fantasy figure of early childhood. The folklore states that when a child loses a baby tooth, if he or she places it beneath the bed pillow, the tooth fairy will visit while the child sleeps, replacing the lost tooth with a small payment.

Rosemary Wells a professor at Northwestern University Dental School during the 1970s was probably the first person to wonder what the tooth fairy looked like, and where the legend started.

Unlike Santa Claus and, to a lesser extent, the Easter Bunny, there are few details of the tooth fairy's appearance that are consistent in various versions of the myth.

A 1984 study conducted by Rosemary Wells revealed that most, 74 percent of those surveyed, believed the tooth fairy to be female, while 12 percent believed the tooth fairy to be neither male nor female and 8 percent believed the tooth fairy could be either male or female.

THE ORIGIN OF THE TOOTH FAIRY

“Wells wrote a series of magazine articles in which she laid out the first substantive overview of the tooth fairy myth.

Then there was her survey, again the first of its kind, conducted among some 2,000 parents in the United States. A decade later, Wells remained so engrossed in her subject that she opened an entire museum dedicated to it, run out of her home in Deerfield, Ill.

By then she had become the world’s expert on the tooth fairy, giving countless interviews and talks, and even appearing on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

Wells’s name became so synonymous with the dental sprite that she had to clarify things to the Chicago Tribune: “I’m not the Tooth Fairy,” she said. “I’m the Tooth Fairy consultant.” It said so on her business card.

A spokesperson for the Chicago Dental Society added, “We have no position on the Tooth Fairy. I refer all inquiries to Ms. Wells.” (source)

The backround behind exchanging teeth for a small payment began in early Europe. It was a tradition to bury baby teeth that fell out. Among the reasons this was done was the fear witches would get ahold of the teeth and ruin the child’s life.

Time for me to walk on down the road…