monkeystrokes6

[monkeystrokes6]

Once upon a time, 2:25 pm to be exact, the Tooth Fairy walked into the dental office for her appointment. #45d had gone mad ever since the crown.

The bullfrog at the reception desk was luxuriating in a coffee mug of water that read, “I HEART you, warts and all.” A bejeweled tiara rocked on its lumpy head as it licked an envelope with a long swipe of a sticky tongue.

“Name?” the bullfrog asked, slurping an unfortunate fly.

“Beatrice Wiggleloose.”

The receptionist's throat swelled. “Ah, the Tooth Fairy. You’ve got a 2:30.”

Beatrice chuckled. “That’s funny.”  

“What’s funny?”

“Two-thirty.”

“What?”

“Two-thirty. Tooth-hurty. I guess you get that a lot."

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Any change in insurance?”

“No. Still HappilyEverAfter Deductible.”  

The receptionist tongued a keyboard, leaving a smudge of fly on the space bar. “Doctor will see you shortly.”

Beatrice found a tuffet in the waiting room near the magazine rack and flipped through a pictorial in Prince Charming. The bridal issue.

She frowned at the puffed sleeves and trains seven-dwarves long. Fairytale weddings had become so gauche.

The make-believe world had lost itself, true love giving way to glitz. Gone were white horses, pumpkin carriages, mice coachmen. Now paparazzi swarmed idling stretch limos pumping exhaust into the glade. With the right litigation attorney, Happily Ever After lasted about two-and-a-half years. Storybook life was fading like calligraphy ink, losing its magic. Cinderella fashion spreads. Unicorns for Squatty Potty.

And now this. A tooth fairy with a dental plan. Just because she’d agreed to a gold crown to try and save her last baby tooth.

A favorite, her sweet tooth. The one that did a little dance over English Toffee, and adored Charotte Russe. Without it, hot fudge might never again send her into fits of ecstasy. Life without it seemed impossible, so she’d done all she could to save it, hence the crown.

The results had been catastrophic. The baby tooth assumed the crown meant he was King and became an infant terrible, creating havoc throughout her mouth, pushing others aside, overreaching boundaries and shifting the entire mandibular to the right. Beatrice touched her tender jaw. Make that extreme right.

Baby King was ruining the once-perfect alignment of her teeth. Even her beatific smile had become crooked.

A man in surgical scrubs stuck his head through a connecting door. Dr. Drilly. "Hi, Beatrice, I hear you’re having trouble with the crown.”

“Trouble is putting it mildly.”

“Okay, let's take a look.”

Beatrice followed his hindquarters, an Appaloosa, into a cubicle. The examination chair had a booster seat. Just right.

"I’ve been kicking myself for not asking this before. What happens to all the teeth?" Drilly asked.

Beatrice tucked her glasses into her diaphanous change pocket as a trio of orbiting pixies the size of crabapples strung a bib around her neck. They wore teensy surgical masks.

“I'm afraid not what it used to be," she said. "Once upon a time they were magic-wanded into stardust. Then, novelty chattering-teeth. Nowadays, they're ground into talcum powder. Occasionally I get a nibble on eBay. Witches, mostly, looking for spell ingredients.”

“Talcum powder? Like for a baby’s behind?”

“Funny, right? What goes around really does come around, I guess.”

The pixies fluttered about her mouth, shining tiny lamps, wielding little mirrors, twirling dental picks like batons.

“Open wide,” said Drilly.

The pixies flitted unnervingly close, riffling nose hairs and tickling her upper lip. King Baby Tooth was in full rant, his painful oratory echoing off the roof of her mouth.

“Without me, this mouth is a periodontal swamp. I alone can keep you straight. I am the whitest and the most stable. Plaque will disappear like a miracle. It will be so beautiful."

“Oh my, that is a problem.”

The pixie with the mirror tilted up so Beatrice could see inside. #45d was staring at her with mean little cavity eyes, its gold crown shining brightly. A nasty crack of a mouth was moving nonstop.

“He never shuts up. Believe me, it's no wisdom tooth. And it's more than I can take.”

“This is my fault, Beatrice, I forgot the molar of the story.”

Beatrice winced. Just when she thought things couldn't get more painful. "Okay, I'll bite. What's the molar of the story?"

“Never let a baby think he's a king.”

With a swish of the tail, Drilly put a hoof on the chair for leverage, clacking silver tongs. “Okay, let's do this."

The pixies stretched her lips and cranked her mouth open with what looked like an itty-bitty car jack. The tongs latched onto the tooth.

“You ready?” he asked.

Beatrice never understood how a dentist expected a patient to talk with a mouthful of pixies. “Noh-voh-cay?”

“Oh right. Almost forgot. Numby!”

A refrigerator-sized ogre draped in a bloody leather smock entered brandishing a sledgehammer.

“The left kneecap ought to do it,” said Drilly. The ogre raised the hammer.

“What the hell?" Beatrice shrieked.

“Dentistry 101. Numby breaks your kneecap while I yank the tooth. You won’t feel the tooth a bit, I promise.”

The ogre tightened his grip, bringing the hammer down with a blood-bubbling bellow and enough force to snap drawbridge chains.

Beatrice sat up, tangled in sweat-soaked gossamer bed sheets. Holy Molar.

Remembering, she lifted her pillow. Her smiling baby tooth beamed up at her. Sans crown. It had all been a nightmare.

“Morning Sunshine,” said the tooth. “What were you expecting, a quarter?”

Of course Beatrice knew there was no other Tooth Fairy to leave a quarter for her, but it was still vital she believe. That was the whole deal. She had to believe.

Before long, Beatrice’s mouth felt normal again. Cuspids, bicuspids, incisors, molars, upper and lower chewing together in unified mastication. She felt sorry that Baby Tooth was no longer with the others and tried to make it up by offering him a gold crown. He respectfully declined, saying that albeit extracted, he was still one with the other teeth. Also, that a crown was a symbol of absolute authority and authoritarianism was a drag, a real nightmare.

And that is the story of how Baby Tooth, with his youthful, uprooted perspective and biting sense of humor, taught Beatrice to embrace positive change and they lived progressively ever after.