How Far do You Take the Lie?

Ok, it's not a lie per-say... Or it's a lie as much as Santa and the Easter Bunny are a lie...

My youngest lost a tooth and the usual tooth fairy monetary reward discussion came up. Oh yes, put it under your pillow and the tooth fairy will bring you money...

No trouble there.

But she decided to write the tooth fairy a note asking "where do you keep the teeth and are you tiny or big, like me?"

So I answered the note on the back using a mechanical pencil to make a very fine line, wrote in a tiny back-hand script so the kids wouldn't recognize my writing... I had, incidentally, done this for our older daughter too, when she lost a tooth in Indonesia. She left the fairy a note saying that she already had tooth fairy money in US funds so to use local currency was fine. Precocious little fart.
Well, I copied some Indonesian language off the wall in the bathroom at the hotel, to respond to her note. I imagine I instructed her to leave her towels on the floor if she wanted the maid to change them, or to save water, hang the towels up if she wished to use them another day... I really have no idea. But I wrote it in my best cursive.

It was a HUGE hit. That made the tooth fairy real!

So in this latest tooth/note episode, the answered note, again, had amazing impact. So much so that they woke me up to see the note, and my oldest, convinced that tooth fairies are very real, related a story of how kids at school made fun of her for still believing in the tooth fairy. They told her it's just her parents pretending.

She told me this looking for a reaction. To which I shook my head and shrugged as if to say, "Wasn't me."

She then said, "No! I know they're real. I don't care what they say. People believe what they want to believe."

Man! Pretty insightful for a 9 year old.

But I digress.

I'm not sure how to find a graceful way out of this perpetual series of "lies" we tell our kids. Santa is real because there are big ash boot prints on the hearth and cookie crumbs and carrot bits left on the plate! (Yes, the carrots are for the reindeer). We go pretty far to suspend belief.

I don't remember being heartbroken when I found out none of that was real. I don't even remember finding out at all, but alas I am aware they live in the hearts and heads of children,

and the delusional.

My dad wasn't allowed to believe in those things because, reportedly, his mother didn't want to deal with the disappointment that would come when he found out the inevitable.

Shame on that thinking. The joy these little tooth fairy note instances bring are precious.

So that settles it. I'll keep up the lie for as long as I can get away with it.