No, not President Obama’s first 100 days. It’s been 100 days of the tooth. The tooth has still not fallen out.

When it was first noticed that the tooth was loose it was exciting. We talked of the Tooth Fairy and money under the pillow. We talked about growing up. Which is, I think, were we lost her.

The girl does not want to grow up. She likes being a kid. For her, youth has not been wasted. She is enjoying her childhood, and more importantly, realizes that it is fleeting and that being a grown up can suck. Mainly because grown ups have to do things like cook and clean and they never play with their friends unless plans have been made. Grown ups don’t play with dolls, stuffed animals and they rarely dress the dog in a Spider-man costume. No one reads stories to grown ups and grown ups have to eat the food on their plates without complaining. Grown ups watch the news or the History Channel and rarely watch cartoons except for Sponge Bob.

I asked the Google about loose teeth and children who refused to let them come out. I got stories of parents who pulled the tooth out only to find their child would not come near them ever again, I learned of parents who endured more than 100 days of the child holding the tooth in. I found conflicting reports from dentists, and more commonly dental assistants, who said that it was okay to let the tooth fall out on it’s own and who said it was not good for the child to hang on to it. I found no answer to the tooth.

Many nights I have looked at my sleeping daughter and almost, almost, reached into her mouth and yanked it out. I just can’t do it. I’m not worried about her spending years on some analysts couch talking about how horrible her mother is for pulling out her precious tooth while she slept. I’ve given her plenty of things to talk to the future therapist about so one more isn’t going to change much. I can’t pull the tooth out while she is sleeping because I know it will wake her up and then I will have to spend the rest of the night trying to get her to stop crying. And I really like sleep.

She will cry when the tooth comes out regardless of how it comes out. I know this. The child cries at the drop of a hat. Lately it has been more emotional crying rather than crying about pain. Recently she played the Wii game Dog Island, in the beginning credits there is a theme song about the game. It’s a rather slow and high pitched song that I have a hard time understanding but the girl cries whenever she starts the game because she says it is so sad. The gist of the game is that the dog/character has to find her way back home. I guess it is a little sad.

Yesterday my daughter announced that she was going to live with me forever. She also said she loved me so much she was going to marry me. I was not expecting to have the talk anytime soon, hadn’t really thought about the need for the talk until she mentioned wanting to marry me. My son said he wanted to live with me forever when he was that age. I knew he would get over it and he did soon enough, he is now looking forward to moving out in two years when he goes to college, so am I. Instead of having the talk I simply mentioned that she can’t marry me because it would be incestuous and we don’t do incest in our family. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. Since when is a talk about incest any easier than the talk? Luckily when she asked what incest was I ignored her question and just asked if her tooth had fallen out which got us quickly off the subject of incest.

In addition to stupidly mentioning incest I also blew it when I decided it would be a good idea to show her the teeth her brother had lost. I have a little box filled with teeth, they might even be mine and my brother’s teeth since the teeth are stored in a small chest of drawers that used to be my father’s. I suspect if I ever need DNA for me, my brother or my son I am ready. But showing her the teeth was a mistake. How the hell had I gotten my hands on the teeth she wanted to know. Why doesn’t the tooth fairy have them?

“Honey, lets have a talk about incest” was my only response.

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