Milestones
Oct. 2nd, 2023 08:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphilo Our youngest granddaughter turned eight yesterday,
I used to be able to write "our youngest grandchild" but now we have a couple of grandsons who are both under a year old- and she gets bumped up from baby of the family to older sister/cousin.
When I spoke to her on the phone yesterday she was wobbling a front tooth at me. It came out later in the day and the tooth fairy made a visit overnight. The going rate in Leicestershire is £5.00.
I don't think the tooth fairy was a thing when I was a kid- so that's one supernatural being I never had to lose faith in. Like so much that is cutesy she seems to be an American import. Wikipedia tracks her back to a 1908 article by Lilian Brown in The Chicago Evening Tribune.
Lilian wasn't for giving money, though; instead she advises mothers to lay in a stock of little trinkets from "the five cent counter".
What happened in my day then? I'm going to say i just walked up to the nearest parent with bloodied tooth on outstretched palm and they exchanged it for sixpence- which was then a small silvery coin of approximately the same size. This is an assertion, not a memory- and I've no idea if it's what actually happened. What I do remember is the curious feeling in the mouth of a loosening tooth and how I just couldn't stop twiddling it about with my tongue- just like Clover yesterday...
I used to be able to write "our youngest grandchild" but now we have a couple of grandsons who are both under a year old- and she gets bumped up from baby of the family to older sister/cousin.
When I spoke to her on the phone yesterday she was wobbling a front tooth at me. It came out later in the day and the tooth fairy made a visit overnight. The going rate in Leicestershire is £5.00.
I don't think the tooth fairy was a thing when I was a kid- so that's one supernatural being I never had to lose faith in. Like so much that is cutesy she seems to be an American import. Wikipedia tracks her back to a 1908 article by Lilian Brown in The Chicago Evening Tribune.
Lilian wasn't for giving money, though; instead she advises mothers to lay in a stock of little trinkets from "the five cent counter".
What happened in my day then? I'm going to say i just walked up to the nearest parent with bloodied tooth on outstretched palm and they exchanged it for sixpence- which was then a small silvery coin of approximately the same size. This is an assertion, not a memory- and I've no idea if it's what actually happened. What I do remember is the curious feeling in the mouth of a loosening tooth and how I just couldn't stop twiddling it about with my tongue- just like Clover yesterday...
