cartooning the Tooth Fairy

When I was small, my dad took care of the Tooth Fairy duties in our house. My dad has always been the family cartoonist, quick to draw up a humorous page whenever something particularly epic happens (such as a monumental Greyhound trip that stranded me in the Colorado Rockies one Christmas...). For every tooth, we not only got the mandatory coin, but also our own personal comic strip, just for us. In my dad's world, the Tooth Fairy was really a corporation, run by men who went around the world to pick up people's teeth. The men all wore these teeth on top of their heads in the pictures, too.

Well, when I had kids, I knew I needed to keep this up. My oldest son pointed out that we live in a world of equal opportunity now, and insisted that women work for the Tooth Fairy corporation, too, so we've remodeled that aspect. But for every tooth, I get to draw up another comic strip. My kids are of course all different, so it's entertaining coming up with something personalized for them.

I didn't figure out until yesterday, though (on the advent of child #3, daughter #1's first lost tooth), that 20 baby teeth x four kids = EIGHTY COMIC STRIPS!!

I'd better get back to work. Someone has another loose tooth...