The “wiggle” has arrived at my house. You know … the wiggle. The toothquake. The shimmy-shimmy in the mouth. The flapping, shaking, waving dance of the first tooth about to sprout wings and fly.
My daughter, 5 years old, has her first loose tooth. It’s flapping about like a little rocking chair, and I’m quaking a bit myself.
It was quite a discovery. She mentioned it while climbing into bed one night. My wife, dubious, had to investigate. It seemed perfectly outrageous and entirely impossible.
Not our child. Not this soon. Not a chance. No way. And then …
“AHHHHHH!”
My wife actually screamed. Three teeth in my own mouth — permanent, irreplaceable chompers that I need for the rest of my life — shook loose in the commotion.
My daughter smiled, giddy with excitement. I feinted.
No, not now. She’s a child. Not even a child. Just an infant. Why did we ever take her out of diapers? See what happens! They grow up and their teeth fall out.
Shoot, I’m just getting used to feeding her solid food. What’s next? A Jonas Brothers concert?
Nothing says “big kid” like a soon-to-be missing tooth. Well, that or preschool street fighter. It’s a toss up.
My daughter has two big kid friends with mouths like the Holland Tunnel. Teeth are missing all over the place, and they subsist on a diet of mashed up hamburgers and broccoli that can only be consumed through a straw.
Teeth are what always conspicuously separated them. Big kids have gaping gaps and look like old men. Little kids have pearly whites that twinkle in the sunlight.
I liked that demarcation line — that my kid could play with them, even be their friends. But she couldn’t totally traffic in their world because she had too many teeth.
How that’s all changing.
“Feel it,” my wife implored me, but I was too afraid. First off, I try to never stick my fingers in the mouth of anyone, or anything, with teeth. Many an alligator handler has learned that lesson the hard way.
Second, if things on your body are loose — a knee cap, an eyeball, some belly fat — I say leave it alone. I have no business touching something that might snap off like a twig. Could you imagine that? I touch this tooth and it falls out? How many fathers have been sent to Siberia for that?
Third, and most important, I don’t want to know about it. Already I’m hearing stories about her little friends who are whistling through the open slots in their mouths. I look around at her preschool class and see more and more gap-toothed big kids. I’m not entirely ready for her to graduate up to that.
I was always filled with a combination of excitement and dread when my teeth started loosening up. Dread because you never knew when the inevitable might come. I don’t think I would have survived the shock of biting into an apple and then looking down to find one of my front teeth embedded deep into the skin.
The worst was when they hung on for dear life, clinging to your gums, dangling wildly like some sort of off-balance trapeze artist, held on by who-knows-what. Unwilling to just give it up and let go. I never wanted to upset the natural process, so I would walk around on tip-toes, trying not to move my jaw, trying keep my mouth open wide while saliva ran down my cheeks.
“Are you OK?” people would ask.
“Oh shu … juth a loof toof. Dun’t wanna’ dithurb it. Han’t eat nuffin’ fu weeks. Hav enny puddin’?”
But there was also excitement because it meant I was growing up — shedding the last vestiges of being a wee-one. New teeth, or that awkward period of no teeth, meant I was on the way to driving, to R-rated movies and hitting the hard stuff — Mountain Dew — whenever I wanted. Big dreams I had.
That’s why my daughter went to bed smiling that night. Dreaming of the tooth fairy and what it means to be a big kid. I guess I’m excited, too. Everything is a new adventure when it comes to parenthood. But I sure am going to miss the twinkle of a little kid smile.