October, 2002:
on losing a tooth

It was toward the end of September that Hila lost her first tooth. It had been on the verge of falling out for a month, and every day we noticed that it was very ready to fall out. One morning, while she was playing in the gan, it did just that. When a tooth falls at home it's not that difficult to find. But when you're in a group of about 30 active five year olds, too busy even to be involved with such an exciting event, a tooth can fall out of your mouth without your even noticing.

And that's precisely what happened with Hila. When she realized that the tooth had fallen, Hila and all of her friends searched the entire gan, but nobody found it. She really lost it - meaning, of course, that this was one less item that we would have to save at home. But losing that tooth raises a rather interesting problem: Both the (American) tooth fairy, and the (Israeli) tooth mouse somehow know to visit children who've lost a tooth and, if the tooth is under their pillows when they're asleep, to remove the tooth and replace it with some sort of (hopefully modest) present. But what's that fairy or mouse supposed to do in a case such as Hila's where there's no tooth under the pillow?

And another, rather obvious quesion: How do you put a picture of a tooth here if you've already admitted that the tooth was lost? But to that there's a simple answer: It's not Hila's but instead the (almost) last tooth that Eitan "lost". Some of these have also been lost in the other sense - apparently forever misplaced. They are, after all, rather small, and as such hard to keep tabs on. Maybe it's best Hila never found hers. And anyway, one doesn't have to wait too long before another one falls out.