I am not a morning person. In the morning, if forced to get up at all, I prefer nothing more than silence, and a cup of coffee as big as my head.

I prefer, as a rule, not to be accosted at my bedside by an aggrieved child holding aloft a tiny pearl white speck in a baggie while babbling something about the tooth fairy?

The tooth fairy?

The tooth fairy!

Great. Just when I thought I had a lock on Mother of the Year, I have to go and forget to schedule “the tooth fairy.”

Forgetful fairy. Faced with the early morning evidence of a lingering lost tooth and no money in its place, a parent cannot tell his or her child that someone as great and mystical as the Tooth Fairy just “forgot.”

After all, the Tooth Fairy instinctively just knows where in the world a tooth waits for “her” visit.

She is further able to traverse her way into any home in the world a la Santa Claus and retrieve a tooth with no one the wiser.

Forgetting just doesn’t seem like something she would do.

It’s a pickle, all right.

Fortunately, if parenthood has taught me nothing, it has taught me to think on my feet — or flat on my back with my head half buried under a pillow — whatever the case may be.

Thus, at a moment’s notice, I was about to cast the mythical, magical tooth fairy in a part equivalent to that of an errant UPS guy.

Timing. “Oh that” I say, feigning a vast and thorough knowledge of Tooth Fairy habits, “that’s because you put it under your pillow too soon, silly”

“Too soon?” He asks.

He’s growing skeptical as he ages, but in his heart he wants to believe.

Besides, he had big plans for that dollar.

“Sure” I say, gathering steam, “remember, your tooth fell out at lunchtime, and you put it under your pillow in the middle of the day.”

I give this obvious faux pas the same gravity as my great-grandmother’s generation would have reserved for wearing white after Labor Day.

As if it is just one of those things that “Everyone Knows.”

“Therefore” I add, believing that if you throw in a few “therefores” and “furthermores” you can generally sound like you sort of, maybe, kind of know what you’re talking about.

I myself got through most of college that way.

“Clearly” (another impressive word if I do say so myself) “she didn’t have you on her route. She’ll swing by tomorrow – but only if you remember to, um, remind her, tonight.”  

There! That sounds convincing don’t you think?

Making it up. “Mom, are you making this up?” Asks he of little faith. Who raised this kid? F. Lee Bailey?

  “Making it up? Why would I make this up? She’ll be here, I swear she will, we just have to remember to remind her at bedtime, that’s all.”

He was quiet, thoughtful even — I was impressed with me if I do say so myself. And then he turned his big brown innocent baby sweet eyes on me and I knew he had a lock on the situation.

“But mom, do you think I get, like, extra?” “Extra?”

“Y’know, ’cause she forgot. Now I have to go to all the trouble again …” Trouble?

What is this, princess and the pea? He has to stick a tooth under his pillow.

The “tooth fairy,” meanwhile, has to struggle to stay awake, creeping back and forth down the hallway who knows how many times, waiting for him to drift off in sleep deep enough to retrieve the tooth.

The “tooth fairy” I might add, still bears the scars from a previous incident when “she” was almost caught mid-retrieval and dropped so quickly to a prone position beside the bed that she nearly embedded a Pokemon action figure into her kneecap. I still suffer a  small, Pikachu shaped twinge whenever it looks like rain.

Believe. And then I looked again at my son.

Still young enough to believe in magic but rowing up - and away from magic - a little bit faster every day.

Cool enough to say things like “sweeeettt!” and wear his ball cap jauntily backwards.

Yet still young enough to wear Spiderman pj’s and clutch a baggie with a baby tooth inside.

He is poised on the brink of being a “big kid” and, if other the older children I see are any indication, will soon believe passionately in the power of cynicism.

Late fee. In the face of this boy, and this vestige of babyhood wrapped in a baggie (a treasure really, if you think about it) and one very forgetful fairy I did what any savvy mom would do: I anted up.

Does the tooth fairy pay late fees? You bet she does.

 It’s a small price to pay for believing in magic.

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