You're Harshing My Buzz, Dude

Because he’s so advanced in every single way, Mr. C has already lost his two front teeth.  Which makes it easy, because now I know what to get him for Christmas.


According to an article my father recently sent me, the “new normal” payment amount from the Tooth Fairy is often five to ten dollars.  God, inflation’s a bitch.  There was no way I was going to give my five-year-old five bucks a tooth (particularly when I remember being happy with just 25 cents [and I’m not that old]), so Bee and I decided we’d do a dollar.  But we went to the bank and swapped for one of those gold dollar coins, so I thought that would make it pretty special.


I check on Mr. C every night after he’s asleep, and usually I rearrange his blankets or move his pillows around, so I knew I shouldn’t have a problem stealing his tooth from under the pillow without waking him.  Still, it’s amazing how nervous I was when the moment actually came to be super-stealthy.

I got the money tied up in our makeshift “tooth fairy pouch” and slipped it back under his pillow with no problems.  I nearly screwed it all up, though, when he almost woke as I enacted my Super-Awesome-Mom-Of-The-Year Bonus Plan: I smeared a dab of glitter face paint on his cheek, planning to tell him that it was pixie dust left from the Tooth Fairy giving him a kiss. 

I view the loss of the first tooth as one of those major milestones; right up there with “first steps” and “learning to ride a bike”.  So you can imagine how excited I was about seeing his reaction first thing in the morning: I slept with the video camera next to the bed so I’d be able to document his early-morning pleasure over the discovery of his special coin and the Super-Awesome-Mom-Of-The-Year Bonus item.  I could already visualize him showing off the pixie dust kiss to all his school friends; in fact, I felt a little guilty for the stir it would cause amongst all the other Kindergarteners whose parents didn’t think to add that Super-Awesome-Mom-Of-The-Year Bonus.

When morning dawned, I turned on the camera and started moving around my room.  I heard him stir, heard him say “What?!”, and waited excitedly.  It took a few more minutes for him to casually amble into my room.

“Morning,” I said, training the camera on him.

“Good morning, but can I see the camera?”

“No,” I said impatiently.  I waited for him to bring up the Tooth Fairy.

“Is it a school day?” he asked instead.

“Yes,” I said, “so you’d better get dressed.”

Instead of rushing off, he casually looked around my room.  Then he looked at me with his wee little tousled head and his sleep encrusted eyes and – this is it, I thought – said, “Can I watch some Paw Patrol before school?”

“No!” I snapped.  “Did the Tooth Fairy come?!”

He shrugged.  “I guess so,” he said.

“Well?”

He looked at me blankly.

“Did she leave you anything?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, in a heartlessly-casual manner.  “I just felt the pillow and there was something hard in it but I couldn’t feel the tooth.”

I sighed with exasperation.  “Why don’t you see what’s in there?”

He wandered back to his room and fetched the pouch, mostly to shut me up, I think.  I filmed his reaction as he opened it and discovered his new, shiny, never-before-seen gold coin and . . . wasted about 10 seconds of film bothering to do so.

He set the coin down and started getting dressed.  I grabbed at my last chance for a touching memory:

“Hey!”  I exclaimed with now-forced enthusiasm.  “What’s that on your face?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, getting out fresh socks.

I said in my sweetest, most-patient mother voice, “WELL, GO LOOK IN THE GOD-DAMNED MIRROR, THEN.”

Which he did in a most-blasé manner.  “It’s glitter,” he reported calmly.

I tried to rally back to a make-a-special-memory frame of mind, so I excitedly asked, “How do you think you got glitter on your face?”

He was back to searching for fresh socks.  “I don’t know,” was the muffled response.

“Wait!” I shouted, with just a little too much hyperactivity.  “I know what that is!”

He stopped to regard me.

“It’s a KISS!” I shouted.  (OK, maybe I was screaming by now.)  “It’s a PIXIE DUST KISS!”

He watched me.

“THE TOOTH FAIRY KISSED YOUR CHEEK AND LEFT A SPOT OF PIXIE DUST!"

My voice was pretty shrill by now, which was probably all that was keeping his attention.

I took a deep breath.  “ISN’T THAT COOL?!!!” I screeched.

He watched me as I filmed him, the camera now shaking a little from all my panting. 

“I guess so,” he shrugged.

Which was the point at which I flipped off the camera in disgust.

I don’t know why everyone has to ruin all the Parental Moments I was looking forward to.  I was let down yet-again the following week, when we had our first Parent-Teacher Conference.

We left Mr. C with a neighbor, and Bee and I walked to the school.  There was nearly a festival atmosphere in the air as we anticipated all the great things that were about to be said about our child.

Bee had always liked Parent-Teacher conferences when S.B. was in school.  “The teachers always said what a wonderful child he was and how fun he was to have in class,” Bee remembered as we approached the school doors. 

Great. I was already comparing Mr. C to apparently-perfect-angel S.B., who -- at this age -- would quietly play on his own, would behave with just a look from his dad, and who would hang out under the booth’s table playing with Legos while Bee worked at the Market.  I was not looking forward to Mr. C failing in the Parent-Teacher Conference department, either.

Which is when I realized that part of the allure of these conferences was that they validated how successful a parent was being at raising their child. But I knew, despite Mr. C’s distressing tendency to actually act like a boy, that we were doing a good job.  As we walked in the classroom, I steeled myself for plenty of praise.

“Mr. C is doing fine,” his teacher reported.  “He can count to thirty and he’s working on counting to 100 by tens.  He scored just above the average-point in a timed test on letter-recognition, but he’ll have to be faster by the end of the semester.  I’m not worried about it, though.  He has good letter-recognition, but he needs to try writing more.” 

Wait a minute; where was all the effusive praise?

“He often takes a long time to finish his tasks,” she continued, “but I don’t think that’s because he can’t handle them or gets distracted; I think it’s just because he’s methodical.” 

But her placation wasn’t about to work on me; I figured he wasn’t doing things quickly because, really, how many times can Mr. C cut out and color a butterfly or flower when he doesn’t even like to cut out and color cars and robots at home?

“He also needs to work a little more on recognizing how to break down words into sounds; that will help with his writing.  But really,” she finished, “he’s doing well and is right where he should be right now.  I’m pleased with his progress.  Thanks for coming”

And then we left.

Bee and I mutely walked for a few minutes, shell-shocked. 

“I didn’t like that,” Bee finally said.  “I think he’s doing fine.  Why does everything have to be about how he does on a test?”

“Well,” I replied, “she said he’s doing fine.  And I agree that he’s right where he needs to be.  It’s just . . .”

We both struggled for words.

“Where was all the touchy-feely stuff?” I eventually verbalized.  “Where was the he’s-so-cute-I-love-his-humor-he’s-great-to-have-in-class stuff?”

“Because you know he is,” Bee claimed, and I confidently agreed.

“You know,” I finally concluded, “I think that’s just the way that teacher is.  I’ve been in the classroom a few times, and she’s always very serious and poker-faced.  I think she’s a good teacher; she’d just not overly-emotional.  And maybe that’s a good thing, since she’s got to try to keep 22 kids in line so she can cram enough material into 2 ½ hours to meet all the state’s requirements.”

“I suppose,” Bee shrugged.  “I just think that the system focuses too much on tests, and not enough on what it takes to be a good, functioning person.  But I’ve always disliked the way we’re educated: I didn’t do well in school, but I’m still a successful person.”

I nodded.  I always did very well in school, so I had the opposite mind-set.  But I also now agree with Gardner’s theory that there are seven types of intelligence, and they’re not all catered-to in our educational system.

I think I was a little extra huggy when we picked up Mr. C, feeling the need to protect him and make sure he felt validated.  So I told him all the good things that had been said about him, and silently vowed just to help him work more on his writing without making a big deal about it.

And, as the day wore on, I realized how important it is for first-time Kindergarten parents to have a good experience with all the first-time Kindergarten things, and wondered about the pressures that must put on Kindergarten teachers.