Last night, Zach pulled one of his molars that’s been loose for a couple weeks. Even though I was proud of him for having the courage, all I could do was find enough self-control amidst my suffering to give him a hug.
The funny thing is, about a month before, he had brought up the “tooth fairy”. A friend of his lost a tooth, and he was telling me that even though his friend believed in the Tooth Fairy, he didn't.
I started telling him about the movie “Darkness Falls” and told him that it’s a true story. I guess he remembered our conversation because when Mom showed up and told him to make sure to put his tooth under his pillow, he said, “I’ll just put it on top of this (the entertainment center).”
Even though he asked Greg about it one night we were over at his house because he saw Greg had the movie, and Greg said everything I told him was true except that it’s fiction and not fact, I could still tell Zach was a little reluctant to put the tooth under his pillow.
It wasn’t until Mom told him that I was "full of it" that he decided I was lying to him.
Had I felt better, I would have, of course, tried to persuade him that I was the only one telling the truth. I would have said something like, “Think about it! If the Tooth Fairy is real, what weirdo supernatural being would sneak into a kids room and exchange their old, rotten teeth for money?”
I really don’t think it would have done any good though because I really think he’s too smart to believe in the Tooth Fairy. It’s funny, I know he knows better than to believe in something as absurd as the Tooth Fairy, but it’s like he’s more than willing to believe in the dark, scary, things that go bump in the night even if it’s more absurd.
It’s like, he said with all sincerity that he didn’t believe in the Tooth Fairy, and I believed him. I could tell that he didn’t. It was that confidence that made me want to mess with him a little and make him second-guess himself ... so I told him about “Darkness Falls.”
It wasn’t until I told him this dark story about the Tooth Fairy that he started to believe she might be real. It’s like he couldn’t fathom a gentle and benign Tooth Fairy that secretly exchanged your old teeth for money, but found it easy to believe in a bitter, weird, scary, murdering ghost that would kill you if you caught a glimpse of her.
I don’t get that about him, why he’s so willing to believe in the bad things. He gets scared so easily, but I think he likes it. I swear, he's so much like his Mom!
I didn’t help though. Like with my sisters and friends, I’ve tormented him with practical jokes and pranks his whole life. My most successful was the one about the scarabs.
He had watched “The Mummy” over at our house when it first came out on DVD and for some reason was terrified of the Scarab Beetles. That’s all he talked about and kept asking if they were real.
Well, one day I was over here and watched him while my Grandpa went somewhere. It was a nice summer day, so we were playing outside. For some reason, he brought up the scarabs and I got a clever idea.
I found one of his lil’ bouncy balls, the kind you get out of like a gumball machine, and taped a long piece of twine to it. I threaded it in through my shirt-sleeve, down across my torso, down my leg, and into my sock.
While I was standing on a lil’ patch of loose dirt on the front lawn, I shouted to him, “Come look at this, I think I just saw a scarab!”
He froze! He looked at me and said, “Nuh uh.”
I said, “That’s what it looked like.”
He states, “Gran’ma says they’re not real.” Then half pleading and half demanding, he says, “Don’t scare me.”
I was like, “Come and look for yourself.”
As he starts walking towards me, I howl in pain. I clutch my foot and stand hopping one-legged in agony.
He stops and says, “Don’t!” It’s like he knew I was faking, but wasn’t quite sure.
I hopped to the picnic table and started franticly untying my shoe. He finally asks, “What!? What is it!?”
In a panic, I say, “I think one got in my shoe and is trying to get in my foot!”
I see him watching my shoe with a look of concern now on his face. I suddenly stomp my foot on the ground and let out another agonizing howl and throw myself on the picnic table. I shouted, “Take off my shoe! TAKE OFF MY SHOE!!”
He is now very scared. I can tell he wants to help, but is afraid. When he approached to try and help, I let out another howl and writhed in agony on the table, which made him step back.
On his second approach, I just pretended to be in agony because I didn’t want to scare him away. When he got real close to my shoe, I grabbed the little piece of twine sticking out of my t-shirt sleeve and started slowly tugging on it.
All of a sudden, he sees this bulge under my pant leg moving up my leg and across my torso. He jumps back. When it gets to my armpit opposite him, out of sight, I start convulsing.
This is where I really got hurt.
My plan was to convulse until I fell onto one of the table’s benches. Well, unbeknownst to me, someone had placed a ladder across the bench I was to fall onto … rather hard I might add.
When I fell and landed across this ladder, I was in REAL pain! My back hurt really bad and so did the back of my head!
What’s funny is that the real pain just convinced him more, so I guess it worked out better than I would have thought.
Anyway, I’m lying there, seriously in pain but suppose to be pretending. Worried and almost in tears, he says, “I’m going to get you help!”
He starts running toward the neighbors, which is quite a distance away out here in the country. I let him get about 15 feet and called him back. I started to feel really bad because I could see him wipe tears from his eyes. When he got back, I asked him to help me up. When I got to my feet, I started tickling his sides and taunted, “I got ya … I got ya!”
Still worried, he asks, “So you’re okay? There’s nothing really wrong? There’s no scarabs? You were just lying?”
I said, “Yeah, there are scarabs, but I don’t think they get under your flesh and as far as I know, exist in Egypt and around that area. So yeah, I was faking, but now I’m really hurt since I fell on that ladder!”
He looked at me as if to say, “Well, you deserve it!”
When my Grandpa got back, he said, “I’m not staying with Shane any more!”
My oldest uncle found out about the prank and laughed so hard he could barely speak. He said, “I wish I could have seen that because I know how scared he is of those scarabs.” I guess my uncle tried to get Zach to watch “The Mummy” at his house after he seen it at mine and he freaked out and wouldn’t even let my uncle put it in.
What’s so funny about Zach is that he’s scared of his own shadow, like his Mom, but doesn’t think twice about other things most people would be too squeamish to do.
Like this one time, I bought a new shirt and it had pins in it. I took the pins out and didn’t notice what he was doing. He was sticking the pins through his skin!
I freaked. I was like, “What the hell are you doing?”
In a tone that would have you believe his actions were totally normal, he says, “What?”
I’m like, “First of all, you should sterilize something before you go poking it through your skin, and secondly, why are you doing that?”
He asks in disbelief, “You’ve never done it?”
I said, “Why would I?”
He just gave me this look and I immediately took the pins. He pleads, “Can’t I at least have one?”
I took a match and sterilized three of them. I handed them to him and said, “Knock yourself out!”
He then wants me to try it and is begging and pleading me to let him stick them through my skin. He assures, “It doesn’t hurt!”
I told him, "That’s not why I don’t want to do it. Once you learn to stick a 2” needle in yourself every two weeks … you don’t think much about it. It just seems like such an odd thing to do for no reason."
Then I thought, “What the hell.” I held out my hand and said, “Here ya go.”
In less than two minutes I had three needles burrowed beneath the skin in my hand, and I have to admit, I didn’t feel a thing. I mean, with the injections, I at least felt the pressure build in my skin before the needle broke through and plunged into my leg muscle.
Anyway, I don’t get how a kid can stick needles under his skin and pull his teeth without flinching, but is afraid of his own imagination.
Hmm …
Anyway, Zach was happy to find a dollar under his pillow. I wanted it to be a Sacagawea Dollar, but no one had one. I just thought it would be cooler for a kid to receive a gold coin dollar than a regular dollar because it’s not something they see very often. I guess I thought it would make it more magical.
