It was a
fairy good year
My kids are only 3 and 5, but I experienced such a sensation the other day when I read an interesting statistic: Apparently, the average amount left by the Tooth Fairy has gone up a staggering 12.5 percent in the last year alone, from $1.58 to $1.78. If teeth were going for that much when I was little, I think I would have spent most of my elementary school years chomping wildly on Mary Janes.
But more importantly, that kind of Tooth Fairy inflation is a disturbing example of the skyrocketing cost of child-rearing. (And for you very young readers out there who may be wondering why parents would be concerned about this — given that Tooth Fairy money is created out of the ether by magical pixie dust — all I can say is that it has something to do with a complicated financial concept that you won’t understand until you’re much older, like escrow.)
And if $1.78 sounds like a lot for a single tooth (and it certainly did to me, given how my wife had to disabuse me of the notion that all kids love a shiny new quarter, which apparently hasn’t been true since 1976), get this: The survey, conducted by Securian Dental, also showed that in the last year, Tooth Fairy amounts actually topped out at a high of — this is not a typo — $25! Delivered no doubt by a Tooth Fairy driving a Hummer and wearing a tiny Prada tutu. I hate that Tooth Fairy.
As if that’s not bad enough, I happened to read those survey results while my wife and I were in the process of shopping for my daughter’s birthday party accessories. Her birthday’s not until May, but you have to start these things early — what if you wait until the last minute and can’t find enough pink plates with little teakettles on them? Using plain white plates at your child’s birthday party would be like Melania Trump holding a cotillion and serving the caviar in hollowed-out Ring Dings.
Trolling the Internet for those plates, along with little plastic teacups, tablecloths, party games, goodie bags and a teakettle-shaped piñata, it occurred to me that we were quickly approaching what I had hoped to spend on my daughter’s wedding in 2027. Thank God she hasn’t asked to have a horse at the party, because I know what we’d have to do to fulfill that request, and my back can’t handle it.
(By the way, for about 16 bucks you can now buy a piñata in almost any shape — Dora, Elmo Spider-Man, etc. — which would probably be kind of disturbing to the old Mexican who originally devised the idea under the assumption that they’d always be little donkeys. Regardless, I’m waiting for one shaped like Disney CEO Michael Eisner, so I can finally use a baseball bat to get back at him for the $10 Disney on Ice “Finding Nemo” Sno Cone.)
None of these things would be so bad in and of themselves, I guess, if they didn’t remind me that it will only get worse as my kids get older and want designer clothes, cell phones, the inevitable trip to Disney World (Blast you, Eisner!) and eventually, yes, that college education. But I suppose the good news is, having reached this realization now, I can spend the next 12 to 14 years coming up with a plan.
Do you think Harvard takes teeth?