Oh, no . . . my tooth

A few weeks ago I let my kids go to play at the park. My little boy, Tommy was going down the slide when he attempted to turn around to see his sister. Somehow, he hit his mouth on the side of the sled and knocked out his front tooth.

Luckily, I had given Kaesi, my 15-year-old daughter, the extra cell phone for emergencies. She called me and told me Tommy had an accident and I could hear him crying in the background. I immediately drove to the park and all three of them were waiting on the sidewalk.

Tommy was still crying and I first noticed the blood all over his face. Then, I saw the empty space where his tooth used to be.

Me - His tooth is knocked out!
Kaesi - I know. I'm sorry.
Me - It's okay. Do you have the tooth? Where is it?
Kaesi - I don't know. In the sand? (I followed her to the slide.)
Me - We have to find it. You always have to get the tooth.

Kaesi was looking under the slide and I walked to the end with Tommy in tote. By pure dumb luck, I only had to look for that tooth for about 3 seconds when I saw it. There it lay in the sand, the entire tooth. I grabbed it and we ran back to the car. I put Tommy in his car seat, jumped in and headed straight for the dentist office, about half a mile away.

I knew they would be closed, but I was hoping that I was wrong. I was right, so I called the phone number on the door. The answering machine had the message I was hoping for: an emergency after hours phone number. I called it. The dentist answered and I told him what happened. He asked me to look at the remaining teeth in his mouth.

Poor Tommy, his mouth was all bloody. His other teeth looked fine, but I could see that his gum was tore all the way up to his lip line. The dentist explained that because Tommy is 3-years-old, he probably has permanent tooth buds forming and re-inserting the baby tooth risked damaging that bud. He said it would be best to let the tooth fairy come and to take Tommy into see him at 6am the next morning. I agreed. What else could I do?

I held up Tommy's tooth and I said to him, "Look, bud."

Tommy stared at the tooth for a few seconds, and then unexpectedly declared, "Oh, no . . . my tooth." He said it so matter-of-fact, I couldn't help but laugh.

The girls were crying more than Tommy. They were sobbing. Tommy watched them for a minute, then said to them, "Don't cry. I'm okay. See? I'm a tough guy." That made them wail. It made me laugh more and both the girls got mad at me. "It's not funny, Mom."

It wasn't funny, but it couldn't be undone either, so there was no point in me being angry or them getting so upset about it. For rest of the night, every time Tommy smiled, both of the them would start crying again.