The Tooth Fairy was an unwelcome nighttime visitor when I lost my first tooth in Italy some sixty-five years ago. She was even more unwelcome earlier this year when she made not one but three unscheduled visits to my mouth. Worse yet, the cash that should be tucked under my pillow is flowing instead into my dentist’s coffers. Ouch!

Tooth fairy…instead of a rat

When I lost my first tooth at age 5, I knew nothing about the Tooth Fairy. I was an American kid who’d never lived in America. For the first five years of my life, home had been tropical Caracas, my father’s first Foreign Service post. Had we stayed in Latin America, it would not have been a lady with wings but a mouse—El Ratón Pérez—who would have taken my baby tooth and left me a peso.

But the month I turned 5, my father’s Foreign Service work transferred us across the Atlantic to Milan, Italy, where the days were shorter, the air was colder, and the city far more austere. The night I lost my first tooth, we had only recently arrived in Milan, where the job of representing America entailed loads of cultural events at which my parents were expected—a La Scala opera performance, an art opening, a reception for a visiting author. It’s one reason that we had a live-in maid.

As my mother tucked my three-year-old sister and me in before leaving for one such work assignment that night, she put my tooth under my pillow, saying said that the Tooth Fairy would take it during the night and leave me money in exchange. As she was closing our door, I realized that I didn’t want some stranger, fairy or not, sticking their hand under my pillow.

My mother thought fast. “How about if Daddy and I take your tooth to the office for the Tooth Fairy to find there?” Off they went, my parents and my tooth, and in the morning my father gave me the Italian lira. Scaredy cat me got the money without the encounter.

My sister—who went on to become a lawyer—spotted a business opportunity and decided to sell her ratty old Caracas baby blanket to the Tooth Fairy, too. Susie and my mother wrapped it up for Dad to take to the Embassy that morning, and he brought my sister the proceeds from the successful sale.

Scared straight

My encounters with a Colombian orthodontist a few years later—pulling out four adult teeth to make room for my buck teeth as they were yanked into place by barbaric braces and the punishing nightly mouthpiece and headgear— only added to my tooth nightmares.

Consider me scared straight ever since: I floss, water pick, and use a 2-minute electric toothbrush twice daily like a sworn dental disciple, and I schedule at least three checkups a year. I even underwent the Invisalign process— twice!—and I’ve maintained my permanent retainers in excellent working order.

The tooth fairy strikes again

So, I wasn’t too worried when a routine check up with the dental hygienist earlier this year revealed that an old crown needed replacing. In fact, it was the solution to a problem area that was getting harder and harder to floss. And I was almost pleased to have the excuse to go back in for the appointment with the dentist herself—I’d heard she was expecting.

After we congratulated each other for our 2024 babies—my coming book, her actual infant—she drilled and dug and fitted a the temporary crown wedged into my mouth. A round of xrays. And with $1,600 transferred by the Tooth Fairy from my bank account to that of my lovely dentist. It is a crime that Medicare does not include dental insurance. [see note below]

The temp came off two days later. Back in I went. When the permanent crown arrived, I had a third appointment to glue it into place. Done. Or so I thought.

Unbelievably, a second old crown came off days later on a Gummy Bear. It was gold, a nugget that I almost took to the young boy up the street for his leprechaun trap. It was St. Patrick’s Day Eve. Back to the dentist, where she found a hole in the crown, a cavity in the tooth, and another $1,600 from the Tooth Fairy.

When a third tooth popped off mid-water picking, I calmly put in in a baggie in my purse. My dentist assumed from what I told the receptionist that it was one of the teeth she’d just repaired. Nope. Seriously? Seriously. Luckily, it was an implant that didn’t need to be re-created, but the gum that had pushed its way under the implant needed to be lasered off. Think tiny light saber. I still don’t understand how there was no burned flesh smell. Ick. More Tooth Fairy proceeds to my dentist.

I just went in to have the permanent crown glued into place. “See you at your next cleaning!” my dentist said as she went on to her next patient.

Yes. Unless the Tooth Fairy gets to me first.

The Tooth Fairy in Milan story is in EMBASSY KID: AN AMERICAN FOREIGN SERVICE FAMILY MEMOIR, Westphalia Press, publication pending.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on Friday introduced the Comprehensive Dental Care Reform Act of 2024, a bill that would expand dental coverage through Medicare, Medicaid and the Veterans Administration and increase the number of dentists, dental hygienists and dental therapists nationwide.

Ken Alltucker, USA Today