I Met The Tooth Fairy!

There was a strange noise on the baby monitor in Rachel's room (we have one to hear if she might be having a seizure.) I sprang from my bed and as I entered the room, I noted a luminescent flitting of some sort.

"Ya got me," she responded in a high-pitched voice.

I rubbed my sleep-encrusted eyes and tried to refocus on what my mind couldn't fathom. But the evidence was clearly in front of me.

"Yeah, ya got me!" repeated the tooth fairy.

"Wow, you do exist!" I exclaimed. "Let's keep it down, we don't want to wake up Rachel."

"Oh, don't worry about her," the tooth fairy said. "I sprinkled fairy dust in her eyes. She'll be out at least a couple of hours."

Dumbfounded, I repeated, "You really do exist."

"Sure I do," the fairy said. "It's just been traditional to let moms and dads take the credit, because no kid past a certain age wants to risk being teased that they believe in me. It's not like the old days before Nintendo and cable tv when kids believed anything. You know, back when you were a kid."

Ignoring the fact that the tooth fairy just called me old, I asked how she allowed herself to be caught.

"It's that canopy," she said, motioning to the pink shroud over Rachel's bed. My wing got caught and I dropped the darn tooth and it fell among the 46 stuffed animals piled up in front of the bed. We used to have fireflies travel with us to provide extra light, but since the recession, they were outsourced to South Korea and we've had to travel solo. Anyway, her baby tooth is so small, I couldn't find it and then my other wing got caught on that deflated balloon over there that has to be at least eight-months-old and that's when you heard the noise and came in here."

"That's a lot to take in," I replied. "I can't help but notice you haven't left her any money yet."

"I know. I was just going to take the tooth with me to the Tooth Fairy Commodities Exchange to see whether I might be able to get a good deal on it."

"The what?" I asked.

"The Tooth Fairy Commodity Exchange," she repeated. "Again, it started in the recession. With times so tight, a bunch of Gnomes, Fairies and Pixies got laid off. The Gnomes, they're kinda shady. A bunch of them started these fly-by-night operations aimed at putting us legit fairies out of business. So we started our own Commodity Exchange to fend 'em off. More bang for your buck teeth, so to speak."

"Go on" I said.

"Say there is a shortage of front teeth in Shanghai. Broker fairies will give us more money if we supply teeth in bulk. So we trade'em. The broker fairies take a 25 percent commission fee, we give you fifty percent and keep the remaining 25 percent to put a squeeze on the gnomes."

"Can I get in on this?" I asked.

"Oh no!" admonished the tooth fairy. "It's a privately-held exchange. But if it ever goes public, I'll make sure to let you know!"

"Great!" I replied. "Thanks! Any investment advice in the event that happens?"

"Sure!" she said. "Buy cuspid!"