The Truth Comes Out

The Kid is super smart.   She taught herself to read before her third birthday. We walked in the room one day and there she was...reading a book we'd never read to her.  She looked up smiling, proud of herself.  

Freaky.

She's also practical.    If something doesn't make sense to her logical little mind, it can't be true.   This can be good or bad.  When she was little, I explained that Momma cooked things on the stove and made them hot.  This made the stove hot.   She never messed with the stove.   

 Easy.

The Kid is compassionate, too.  Since she's our only child and is the only grandchild on one side and since her mother is a big bawl bag when it comes to things dealing with her only child growing up, The Kid often does things to make her mother happy. It's not just me.  She's this way with her grandmother, too.  She'll let us buy things that make us happy, not her.   She'll see a little kid movie, WE want to see, not her.   And apparently, she'll believe in things, L-O-N-G after she knows the truth, just to make us happy.

Love that child.

The Kid is now 12.   She and I are now navigating the waters where half the time she hates me; the other half she just doesn't like me that much.  There are occasional glimpses of the little girl I used to know, and I know she'll come back when she's older when I'm not so stupid, but in the meantime, it's a tentative coexistence.  

I may have to kill her before she's 20.  

The other night Big Daddy was out of town with his brother, so I took her on a Mommy-daughter date.   As we settled in the booth, our respective meals chosen, the strangest topic came up... when she stopped believing in those magical tenets of childhood:  The Easter Bunny, The Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus.   

Apparently, the answer is a long dang time ago, and I've been wasting money for years on stuff I didn't have to buy, because the Kid thought it would hurt my feelings to know the truth. 

Years ago, when the child was about five or six, she was eating a cinnamon roll during children's church.  Our church had two services and the idea was that you went to one and served in the other one.   I was working with the two and three year olds when they brought my child to me, distraught.   There was snot hanging off her chin, and she could barely speak through the gasps for breath. I saw no blood, so I quickly ran my hands over her wrists and checked her legs, sure she must have a broken bone for this intensity of crying.  I was wrong. No broken bones... a lost tooth.  Her teacher told me she had been eating her food, when she accidentally swallowed one of her baby teeth.  The Kid was upset because now the Tooth Fairy would never know.   

Being a resourceful, scrapbooking mom, that night I wrote the cutest little, decorated note from The Tooth Fairy herself, saying that The Fairy had seen what had happened and it was quite all right.  The Fairy didn't need that particular tooth and would just leave the money now, rather than in a few days after The Kid has sifted through and found the tooth, which was The Kid's plan. 

Now The Tooth Fairy only left fifty cents a tooth, usually.  After a particularly bad experience at the pediatric dentist when my first-grader had to have four teeth pulled at one time, in preparation for braces later, The Tooth Fairy did leave five bucks, but that was extreme times.  A month later, when they pulled four more, she got ten dollars.  For this particular tragedy, three dollars were left.   

The next morning, the Kid was happy, I was thrilled that she didn't know the behind the scenes, and we went on about our lives.     

Until the other night. 

There sat my almost teenager explaining that she was ecstatic the day she got the note and crushed soon after when she saw me write the same scrapbook-y handwriting on a scrapbook page.    

And that was when she stopped believing in The Tooth Fairy.

Before the pediatric dentist tragedy.   Before several other costly extractions.  Before she was so dang melodramatic about leaving her tooth out for The Tooth Fairy, that I just KNEW she still believed.

Before.

I asked her why she never mentioned any of it.

Her answer?   "You were giving me free money.  Are you stinkin' kidding me?"

Okay.  Fine.  What about the Easter Bunny?

Her verbatim response, "Well, I've never really believed in him."

Seriously?  Was it the eggs?  The chocolate?  A bunny breaking into our house? The fact that we're teaching her about Jesus and a giant bunny didn't really fit with that?

Nope.

"Mom, a rabbit doesn't have opposable thumbs.  How would he ever carry that magical basket of chocolate-y goodness without thumbs?  How did you people ever expect me to believe in *THAT*?"

So sorry, reader of all things National Geographic. I thought you might have gotten caught up in all the free candy, chocolate rabbit ears, and FUN.

Brat Child.

"So, what about Santa Claus?" I queried.

In our house, I made the mistake of saying, when The Kid was in third grade and a little girl told her Santa wasn't real, that "if you don't believe, you don't receive."

Don't tell your kids that.  She's gonna be 40 expecting gifts.   

I think she doesn't believe, but just wants the expensive things.  "Santa brings better gift than you do,"   she says.

*Sigh*

Anyway, her response on Santa was rational, well-thought out, and total blarney.   "I'm kind of torn on the whole Santa issue.   On the one hand, time goes so slow Christmas Eve.   Scientifically, he has to cross the time zones, and he's doing two different hemispheres, so daylight here, dark there.  Totally doable.   On the other hand, he breaks into your house, eats your food, leaves crumbs everywhere, and then leaves.  I don't know.  I do know if you don't believe you can't receive, so...."

And she grinned.    

Santa presents 'til she's 40, I know it.