The Economics of Teeth

All right - I've been brought to task by certain people on this list numerous times for the fact that our tooth fairy seems to be paying below market rate for our children's teeth. A quarter a tooth, to be precise. It seems that my critics are right - the Wall Street Journal reports that the average pay-per-tooth is $2.64. Of course, that includes the show-offs who pay $10 for each tooth. $10! If we did that, we could never convince our kids to go outside and shovel the neighbors' walks. They'd just sit in the house all day, yanking out their teeth. What's the world coming to, anyway? When I was a kid, I had to work to get $10. This is ridiculous.

I spent this evening playing Bunco with a group of my neighbors . Now, Bunco is neither fascinating nor challenging; but it beats the heck out of sitting home and watching Larry futilely trying to figure out how to afford a bigger house. It's pitiful, watching a grown man cry like that. He gets the spreadsheets wet, too. So I went out and enjoyed gambling my 5 dollars away (for those of you keeping track, that's the equivalent of 20 baby teeth). Would you believe that one pregnant woman there was playing for diaper money? Talk about the seamy underside of suburban life. Frightening, I tell you.

I should catch everyone up on what the children have been doing; but, truth to tell, I'm sick of thinking about kids. And you're probably sick of hearing about them. Let's just pretend they're not here right now. That's right - no one whining, no one throwing adolescent-sized tantrums, no one crying at the dinner table because their meat touched their potatoes. I think we all need our little fantasies now and then, don't you?

I bought the book "Best of Bombeck" (Erma, that is) from the library for a dollar (I know, 4 baby teeth). Having thought she was funny when I was a mere lass of 11 or 12, I figured she'd seem even more humorous now that I am, essentially, living her life. But unfortunately the book was too, um, accurate to be funny. I realized, with great dismay, that she had already documented my entire existence, right down to the alienated teenager and the lousy family car trips and the dead mice in the walls of our house. Is there no hope then? Is this my fate?

I don't think I should be finding Erma Bombeck's writings to be this meaningful. I have to figure out a way to broaden my horizons a bit - you know, enough that I don't feel that I'm channeling Erma each and every day of my life. Maybe I need to go back to school or something. I could study something enlightening (or at least marketable).

Come to think of it, the last 2 times I sent away for graduate school catalogs, I ended up pregnant. So perhaps that isn't such a good idea either. Oh, well.

Time to sign off - Larry wants to run those numbers again.