Don’t feed a tooth to your friends. Labels matter.

How to Nearly Drive away a new friend by feeding them a human tooth in a few complicated steps

So you know that slightly awkward time when you are first hanging out with a new couple? People you and your husband both get along with. Cool people. It’s this weird platonic couples dating thing. And then, through a series of unfortunate events, you accidentally feed one of them your nephew’s tooth. And they still come back to your house ever; then you know you made a set of lifelong friends.

My nephew lost a tooth at our house a few summers ago. I put it in a ziploc bag and stuck it to my fridge with a magnet, for tooth fairy purposes. Here’s the important detail: we only had gallon sized ziploc bags and a 6 year old’s tooth is pretty small. Like so small, you hardly notice it in a gallon sized ziploc bag.

Our new friends (let’s call them the B’s) came over to BBQ and they insisted on making dessert when they were here: a classic southern banana pudding. They made it, stuck it in the fridge to chill, and we ate it after dinner. Cut to Mrs. B spitting in horror a human tooth into her hand. She starts reacting (to be fair, to a lesser degree than I would have in her shoes) thinking that there was a random tooth in the box of ‘Nilla wafers.

Who doesn’t love Nilla Wafer – Completely human tooth free.

I remember thinking, “That’s weird. Nephew lost his tooth today…… OH NOOOOOO!”

I rushed to the fridge and sure enough: no ziploc bag. I solemnly swear, I never dreamed this would happen. My husband, completely innocently, took the bag off the fridge and gave it to the B’s to use when they were smashing ‘Nilla wafers for the pudding. We awkwardly retrieved the tooth from Mrs. B. And I labeled the new tooth container clearly.

The honest-to-god ACTUAL picture of the note I put in the container. In retrospect this was clearly more OBVIOUS the zip-loc bag

Making friends as an adult is hard. Finding friends both you and your spouse like is even harder. Finding the people who you accidentally feed your nephew’s tooth to AND they come back to your house ever again is like finding the goose who laid the golden egg.

The possibilities for what COULD have happened with our friends:

• They could have never come back forever having a ‘bad taste’ in her mouth about us. (“Uh, yeah, we’re too busy to come hang out. You disgusting tooth eating weirdos”).
• Mrs. B could have swallowed Nephew’s tooth and never known.
• • This would result both in my nephew’s heartbreak at his tooth going missing; and
  • the debate about whether we needed to mention to our new friends that they probably/maybe could have eaten his tooth once we put missing tooth and missing ziploc bag together.
• My nephew could have been present when she spit the tooth out (“You ATE MY TOOTH”) Can you imagine the scene?

As it stands, I have no idea if my nephew knows what happened. What he doesn’t know probably wont hurt him. The same way (in a completely unrelated incident) another family member has no idea that the ‘lost’ tooth that was subsequently ‘found’ actually belonged to a completely different family member and was substituted in a pinch to leave under a pillow.

A swallowed or lost tooth was always a trauma. What would the tooth fairy say????Lillian Rose Tooth Pillow, Lost And Found, 6.5″ x 7.5″

The take home lessons are:

1. Label all ziploc bags in use. ALWAYS. WITH BIG MARKER.
2. Always have a back-up tooth to give the tooth fairy.
3. It’s better to know who the disembodies tooth you accidentally eat belongs to, rather than eating an anonymous random tooth.

Thanks for coming back, Mr. and Mrs. B. we love you.

We share in Fort Birthday