I am a cheapskate Tooth Fairy.

So I am going to pretend there are actually people who read this blog and ask a poll question:

How much money does the Tooth Fairy leave?

An acquaintance-friend recently asked on Facebook, as her sixish-year-old son has his first loose tooth.

The average of the eleven responses was $6.45 for the first tooth. (!)

Three parents pay their sixish year old children TWENTY DOLLARS for losing a tooth.

Twenty dollars! To a small child! For an event over which the child has no control. It's not like it's some tremendous accomplishment that the child worked long and hard to achieve, overcoming great obstacles and showing great fortitude of character.

It's a tooth, people, and it was going to fall out all on its own no matter what the darn kid did or didn't do.

Is this some recent development? As my mom said in her comment (which brought that average price down a quite bit), "I swear that a quarter was the norm when you were a kid, Katie."

Is she right, or were many of my little friends receiving fat stacks (as they say) for their baby teeth back in the nineties?

Sometimes I am just poking along in my ordered little life when something like this slams into me out of nowhere, and I realize just how many things I never consider in life because I don't even ask the question.

I mean, why are we paying kids for losing teeth anyway? It never occurred to me before how intrinsically strange that is.

Anyway. In case you were curious, some people gave "special" coins (fifty cent pieces, gold dollar coins) or bills (two dollar bills), which I think is neat--something that's more about what it is than about how much it is. (But then, I am certainly a collector and packrat so of course that appeals to me.)

One other parent seconded my mom's quarter, while the majority of the parents pay five dollars.

This still begs the question: What on earth is a six-year-old spending twenty dollars on, anyway? While I could see an argument for using this as an opportunity to teach stewardship and saving and happy fun financial responsibility, seriously, that's a lot of money for a little kid.

Isn't it?

I can tell you what I saved my allowances up for at that age.

Books.