Tooth Fairy Inflation

What's the going rate for the Tooth Fairy these days? Go ahead. Make a stab.

Twenty-five cents? Maybe a dollar? If you're like me, your only frame of reference is what the Tooth Fairy used to give you, some twenty-five plus years ago. I was lucky to get a dime, if she remembered. (Hey, I'll cut my parents some slack. With six boys at home, the deciduous pearly whites must have added up quickly.)

But the question has suddenly become pressing, as now my kids are losing teeth left and right, up and down. We're down three teeth in the last month, with two more wiggly ones on the way. Joy's first one hung on by a literal fleshy thread for what seemed like weeks, and then it finally, mercifully plopped out. She was taking too much pleasure in grossing her doctor daddy out, anyway.

But late one evening, out it came, the first one ever in the family, and there we were. After the general excitement (and strange poignancy I felt about my oldest losing a body part) subsided, the next exclamation out of Joy's mouth was, "That means the Tooth Fairy is coming tonight!"

Now, I'm not entirely certain that Joy believes in the Tooth Fairy, anyway. She seems to have an innate skepticism about these things. (See this entry from two years ago: one of my personal favorites). She's been inventing pretend notes from Leprechauns and leaving them around our house, and she has the neighborhood kids all boondoggled.

But believing in the Tooth Fairy is now to her immediate and monetary advantage. So after her exclamation, Mommy and Daddy shot furtive glances at each other that silently asked the same question that started this post. (Sorry, I just wanted to throw in an utterly recursive link.)

A few minutes later, I slyly, desperately asked Joy, "Now, how much money does the Tooth Fairy leave under your friends' pillows?"

"Most kids get, like, five dollars," she said sweetly.

My jaw dropped, but I covered. "Five dollars? That's a lot more than the Tooth Fairy used to give."

"Really?" she asked. "How much did you get?"

"I think I used to get ten cents, maybe a quarter."

"Well, some kids only get two dollars. But some kids get toys and treats and books, or, like, lots of money."

I wasn't digging this newly affluent Tooth Fairy, which must be a reflection of the generally mid-to-upper class Denver suburbs, so I sought to tamper down expectations. "Two dollars still sounds like a lot to me, sweetheart."

"Yeah, I guess so," she replied.

And two dollars is what she got, after I had to make a late run to the ATM and then the store to get some change. Grant got two dollars last night after he popped himself in the face with a basketball and his loose tooth tumbled out in the bloody aftermath.

Two dollars still seems high to me, but we couldn't go lower than my daughter's conception of the lowest-going rate. Wouldn't that make our kids think they were less important? But we didn't want to give in to the Tooth Fairy Stimulus Package, either, with ever-escalating premiums and expectations. So we settled on two bucks, and to me, that still seems fair. Hey, it's a 2000 % increase over the last twenty-five years, which isn't bad at all.

Those of you who have kids or will soon have them, what do you think? What's the Tooth Fairy's rate in your area?

Making Peace with Barney

I used to be a hater. I used to curse and spit venom whenever I saw His Purple Cheery Chubbiness flash across the TV screen. The eery, vacuous smile. The fingernails-on-chalkboard of his chuckle-headed voice. The social propaganda. The ubiquity.

There was a Barney conspiracy afoot, a brainwashing of an entire generation, presumably to activate, as some future time, a latent hypnosis, and then Barney's indoctrinated childhood minions would be led like lemmings off of some socialist-worker cliff. I was on to it. Others recognized it to, and reacted with similar antagonism. Barney, it was said, must die.

But that was many years ago, before I had children of my own, before I was given a glimpse of the world through their small, innocent eyes.

Without fail, each of my three children, when between the age of one and two, has shown an innate affinity for Barney, despite our best efforts to the contrary. His size and giant, semi-lunar dentition don't seem to frighten them. They sing with Barney. They laugh and dance with Barney. My youngest, Justin, in particular loves Barney. In fact, one of his earliest words was "Bonnie," which means Barney and which has become a frequently repeated (as in fifty times an hour) refrain.

We do our best to ration his Barney exposure: no more than one thirty minute episode a day. But there are times when a little bit of Barney is just the right medicine.

Take last night, for instance. Poor Justin has had an upper respiratory infection for a few days, and last evening became feverish and fussy, pulling at his ears. We knew he had probably developed an ear infection, but it was late at night, and there wasn't much that could be done at that hour. (Today, I brought him into my clinic, confirmed the ear infection, and started him on antibiotics.) He was inconsolable and exhausted, and so were we.

Then, a lightbulb appeared over my head like a giant purple bioluminescent blob: Barney could comfort him. Thanks to the magic of On-Demand, Barney was soon chuckling and clucking his way across the screen, and little Justin was instantly pacified. We watched together as Barney saccharinely championed toothbrushing and the pure fantastic fun of visiting the doctor's office. (Okay, so I even felt a little subtle gratification that Barney held my profession in such high esteem.) Soon, Justin was sleeping peacefully in my arms as Barney sang away with unyeilding affirmations into the flickering shadows of my family room.

I'll admit it freely now: I've grown soft on the Gianormous Purple Dinosaur. I've come to find his message innoucous, and his demeanor, if not charming, then at least not nauseating. And I appreciate the comfort he offered my son in his moment of distress last night.

But B.J. and Baby Bop? If I see their vile visages one more time, then I may have to throw a brick through my TV.

Bono, Barack, and Steve Nash

You know the old question, "Who would you invite to dinner if you had the chance?"

For me, it's easy. Three dudes: Bono, Barack, and Steve Nash.

What a dinner party it would be! We have so much in common, the four of us.

• Bono and I could talk about our golden pipes and world-wide charisma.
  
• Barack and I could joke about our similar gangly frames and worldviews on globalization and the American Dream.


• And Steve Nash and I wouldn't have to talk much. We'd just head out to the driveway and shoot the three ball from deep and dazzle each other with our sweet passing. He and I are on the same wavelength.

Some people might dream wistfully of such a dinner, and yet never see it come to fruition.

Not me. The invitations are in the mail. The steaks have been bought. Now we'll just wait and see who shows up.

Who would you fave five (or three) be?

LOST In Space

"We have to go back, Kate. We have to go back!"

This post is a shout-out to what has become a semi-obsession with the only TV show I regularly watch, other than The Bachelorette. (Just kidding. I don't watch that anymore after what Suzie did to Veronica.) :)

Why do I love LOST so much? Let me count the ways:

• The writers. I don't know how they do it: an indecipherable plot (and I mean that in the most appreciative way) weaving in and out of different times and places; flashbacks or flash-forwards that always tie in the current action with distant plot lines; a cast of more than twenty major characters with interwoven histories; and a ridiculous amount of symbols and allusions from science, literature, religion, history, philosophy and art. But they have balanced all of these elements over more than a hundred hours of programming. They have kept and rewarded their audience's fragmented attention over six seasons, and yet each episode stands on its own as a captivating hour of television, each hour almost always paying off with a bizarre, unforeseeable twist, an "Aha!" moment that has become addicting. (Each episode I swear I'm going to see it coming, but I rarely do, and then I'm like, "Dude, that was sweet," as I munch on the final unpopped kernels of popcorn from my dark and suddenly spooky family room.)
• The production values are superb. Lush Hawaiian locale, authentic retro scenery from across a half dozen distinct time periods, funky sci-fi props, crisp editing, eerie score. You won't see anything look or sound better on TV than an episode of LOST.
• I identify with Jack Shephard, a frustrated doctor with major control issues who has leadership and greatness thrust upon him, all the while waging internal battles between faith and science. Plus, we both look really bad in a beard.
• I identified the Island with our time in Wyoming. (In fact, I came to call Worland, "The Island.") A magical, frustating, isolated, and timeless place overrun with warring factions, a menagerie of motives and mysteries.
  

It might be hard to jump into the show now if you haven't been following it. As I said, the plot is so complex, so recursive and tangential, that it might be impossible to catch up entirely without back-watching every episode, which are available at abc.com. But it's worth a try.

When I first got into the show in season three, I became frustrated because it seemed there were so many loose ends that they could never be tied up, like the producers were just messing with our minds to hook us into the advertising revenue of the next show. But now, as LOST reaches the midway point of its penultimate season, the loose ends are starting to be tied up and the diffracted plot seems to be funneling back into a semi-cohesive narrative. (However, I think some of the tie-ups are forced, and I don't honestly believe that writers/producers had even half of the over-arching plot worked out when they started in Season One.)

But now I've learned to accept and even relish the ambiguities of the show. The point isn't to figure it out. The writers aren't going to let you do that, especially because, like I said, I don't think even they know how things are going to turn out. The Island on the show is a character in itself, and I think it's a meta-symbol for life: something powerful, compelling, and indescribable tears us apart and and brings us together, thrills us and torments us, casts us off and then redeems us. The point of the Island and the show isn't to solve the mystery. The point is to dazzle your mind. At this point, I'm just enjoying the ride.

The genius of the show is in its complexity. I compare it to what you would find if you were an alien dropped into the middle of present-day Iraq. You would find factions of US troops, Iraqi soldiers, Al-Qaeda terrorists, Western mercenaries, Shiite loyalists and regular civilians, all with they own agendas and motives. You may (or may not) find weapons of mass destruction, nuclear reactors or chemical weapons, statues of Saddam and ancient Mosques. If you dug deeper, you might find Mesopotamian temples and artifacts mixed in with American trinkets and bullet casings. In short, you'd find one tremendous mileu of humanity, horror, and history, and it would be impossible to try and sort it all out and explain it to another foreigner in any concise way. In the end, the history you pieced together may not make any real sense or mean anything, but it would be a description of the untidiness and indecipherability of life, and you might best represent that as art through a hundred hours of programming over six years.

(One final thought: has any show ever generated a more loyal and intelligent fan base? You can enjoy just the pagaentry and drama of the show, or you can peel back layer after layer of allusions and symbols in a quixotic attempt to fathom the shows true meaning. There are dozens of high quality blogs and websites dedicated to deciphering LOST, and some of them are so detailed that it's like reading a college dissertation on each episode. Here are links to a few of my favorites:)

Doc Jensen: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,1550612_20245769_20261566,00.html
Erica: www.longlivelocke.blogspot.com
J. Wood: http://www.powells.com/blog/?author=104

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