Well, I could tell you about the time I was a Tooth Fairy. It was my first job, I wasn't very good at it and one night I made a terrible mistake. It all began like this.....
I had just curled up in my bed. My pillow was full of dreams and I was settling down for a good night's sleep when, Clang! Clang! Clang! The Tooth Bell rang. There is no knowing when a tooth will fall out, and when a Tooth Fairy will have to collect it.
Children spend a lot of time wiggling their teeth to make them loose. A difficult tooth will hang on by a thread for ages. Then, when the owner is least expecting it, pop! Out it comes. That is what happened to a boy called Patrick.
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Patrick had been tugging away at his tooth all day. It was a front tooth(they are the worst) and it wouldn't let go-even though it was very wobbly. But while Patrick was chewing a toffee.... oooof! It fell out. And there it was - a little sticky, but a good tooth just the same.
It may surprise you to learn that some people(mostly grown-ups) do not believe in fairies. It is hurtful, but there it is. Curiously, children who say they don't believe in them suddenly change their minds as soon as a tooth falls out. It was like that with Patrick.
"will the fairies give me lots of money for my tooth? he asked his mother at bedtime.
"I didn't think you believed in all that stuff, "she said.
"Er... I do, "said Patrick, not very convincingly."so, how much do you think it's worth?
"Not much, all stuck up with toffee, "said his mother.
So, Patrick brushed his tooth until it sparkled. Then he put it under his pillow, and fell asleep. Which is when the Tooth Bell rang, and I flew off to find him. Patrick lived at number sixty-two, sky view flats in the middle of a big city. Fairies find cities very confusing, so it took me a while to find his address. And once inside Sky view flats, I discovered it had many floors. On each one, there were lots of doors with numbers.
Now I should explain that I have never been very good with numbers. I could grant you THREE WISHES without any trouble. I know how many beans make FIVE. After that I get in a muddle. That night I flew along one long corridor after another looking at all the numbers, and getting more and more muddled. Eventually I stopped outside Number Twenty-Six. It looked the right number to me, so I slipped through the keyhole. In two blinks, I was sure I had found Patrick's bedroom. The boy(or so I thought) was huddled under the bedclothes and on the bedside table were some teeth. Not just one tooth, but a WHOLE SET of them, floating in a glass of water.
A more experienced fairy would have known something was not quite right. But you must remember that I was very new to the job, and it was exciting to find so many teeth all at once. I took the teeth and in return left behind a large bag of silver. I thought that was a fair exchange. But later, when I showed the chief Tooth Fairy what I had brought, she was very cross.
"You silly fairy! " she cried. "They are false. False! We can't make pearls from FALSE TEETH Only the whitest, pearliest baby teeth will do. That's what fairy pearls are made of. "
So I lost my job.
That same night another fairy went to Number Sixty-two to collect Patrick's real tooth. The next morning he found a silver coin under his pillow, and was very pleased.
As for the owner of the teeth at Number Twenty six.... It turned out that they belonged to an old man called Harold. When he woke up the next morning, he was amazed to find a bag of silver in place of his false teeth(which had never fitted him properly anyway). And he has believed in fairies ever since.....
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