- When I was seven years old, I murdered the tooth fairy,
and this is that story.
The year was 2001 and I had just lost my first tooth.
I was one of the first people in my class to lose a tooth
so it was a really big deal.
Everyone was very impressed as I held my tooth up
proudly for them to see.
I imagine that's probably what Beyonce feels like
when she points her microphone to the crowd.
When I got home from school that day,
I showed my mom and my siblings my tooth.
That is when my mom sat me down and told me all about
this elusive tooth fairy.
Tonight I was going to put my tooth under my pillow,
go to sleep and then a tiny fairy was going to
sneak into my house, take the tooth,
and then leave me money in its place.
I had a lot of questions.
What happens if I'm not asleep when she comes?
What if I have to talk to her?
Does she speak English?
What language does she speak?
She lives in Antarctica, right?
How many visits does she make a night?
What if she can't find my tooth?
What if my head is just too heavy for her tiny little body
to lift up?
What if she just forgets to come?
Okay, listen.
I was already terrified of Santa,
a man who left me multiple gifts a year.
Don't even get me started on the man-sized rabbit
who leaves me chocolate every Easter.
Not a mythical creature, but I was also pretty terrified
of my mail man.
As you can tell, I was a very anxious child.
And an equally anxious adult.
I hated talking to people I didn't know.
I hated talking to people I did know for that matter.
I was so shy that my mom resorted to paying me
25 cents every time I said hi back to anyone
who greeted me.
Instead of meeting them with this weird, awkward silence.
Back to the tooth.
When bedtime finally came, I knew there was no way
I was falling asleep anytime soon.
Since apparently I was having company that night,
I put on my favorite pajamas and I brushed my hair
before I went to bed.
I wanted the tooth fairy to think I was
well dressed and pretty.
Even at seven years old, I was a huge narcissist.
So it's the middle of the night and I've spent hours
tossing and turning.
Honestly I wanted nothing more than to just pass out
so I'd miss her completely.
Luckily at some point, I did fall asleep.
Cut to the next morning and something feels off.
I wasn't sure if it was still the middle of the night,
so I didn't open my eyes right away.
One thing I was sure about though,
there was something lodged under my back
that hadn't been there when I fell asleep.
I shifted my body very slightly from side to side.
Whatever was under there was hard yet soft.
It was about the size of a small body.
A fairy's body.
Oh shit.
I was laying on top of the tooth fairy's dead body.
I literally froze in fear.
Before you ask, I don't sleep with any stuffed animals
on my bed, this is literally the only thing
it could have been.
I realized I must have rolled on top of her while she
was trying to take my tooth.
Oh my god, did she suffocate?
Did I break all her bones?
I had no way of knowing, but one thing I did know,
I had just killed someone.
I just killed the woman responsible for exchanging
all the world's teeth for money.
As far as I knew, I was the most recent kid on earth
to have lost a tooth.
Everyone in my class knew.
My parents knew, my siblings knew.
There was a tooth trail.
When the authorities catch wind of her disappearance,
they're coming for me first.
I had to get rid of the evidence.
I decided that first and foremost, I was gonna need
to make it look like the tooth fairy had shown up.
I decided I was going to take my tooth out
from under my pillow and throw it down the garbage disposal.
I wasn't allowed to use the garbage disposal,
but I figured the next time my mom turned it on,
the evidence would be destroyed forever.
Next, I was gonna steal a dollar out of my dad's wallet.
I was gonna take the dollar and place it under my pillow
so that way when the police showed up,
I could show them the dollar, they'd know the tooth fairy
had shown up to my house and they'd move on.
That left one more problem for me to deal with.
How was I going to dispose of this dead body
without my mom finding out?
Looking back only now do I realize how truly fucked up
this next train of thought was.
My first thought was to throw her body in my bathroom
trash can and cover her with toilet paper.
The more I thought about it,
I figured it was just too risky.
My mom would definitely see the body,
so I scratched it.
I definitely couldn't throw her body in the huge trash cans
in our side yard.
For all I knew, our garbage men were huge snitches.
This idea, out of the question.
She was probably too big to flush down the toilet.
Do I dump her body in the kitchen trash can?
My dad was always snooping around there.
I couldn't risk her dropping the tooth fairy's
mangled, bloody body at my dad's feet like she did
with the rats and birds she found in our backyard.
Backyard.
The backyard.
That was it!
I would bury her in a shoe box in my backyard
just like I did with my dead hamster Carmel.
May she rest in peace.
I decided I'd bury her in the exact same spot
as my hamster so that way, if the police,
I don't know, brought some sort of cadaver sniffing dog
to the house, I could assure them that the only
dead body on this property was that of a hamster.
Alibis, baby.
Okay.
I think we've got a plan here.
I'd store her in a shoe box in my closet until sundown.
In the dead of night, I'd take my plastic shovel
that I used to build sand castles at the beach with
and I'd dig a shallow grave by the fence in my backyard.
It was the perfect cover-up to an accidental crime.
Throughout this entire planning process,
I still hadn't opened my eyes.
I seriously hadn't moved a single inch
in what felt like an hour.
I knew that eventually I had to open my eyes,
sit up, and put my plan into motion.
I had to face the facts, look straight into her cold,
dead fairy eyes and finally accept what I had done.
The clock says it's 7 a.m. so it's definitely morning
at this point.
I slowly sat up, my heart beating out of my chest,
and that's when I realized the thing I had been laying on
this entire time was my own arm.
That's right, at some point during my stress-fueled slumber,
my arm had lodged itself under my back and was now
completely numb.
From the tips of my finger to the top of my shoulder,
couldn't feel a thing.
I had been laying on my own arm for the past hour
while I devised a plan to cover up the murder
of the tooth fairy.
I have never been so relieved in my life to know that,
one, I wasn't a cold-blooded murderer.
Two, I wouldn't have to talk to the police,
or any strange adult for that matter.
And most importantly, three, my mom wouldn't be mad at me.
When you're seven years old, there is nothing scarier
than disappointing your parents.
Looking back, the worst part of this story is that when
I did go to look under my pillow to see what the tooth fairy
had left me, my tooth was still sitting there,
right where I had left it in a plastic zip lock bag.
My parents forgot that I had even lost a tooth,
and they never came to swap it out for money
like they were supposed to.
So not only was I now moneyless and exhausted,
but I was gonna have to go through a whole nother night
of waiting for the tooth fairy to show up.
Thanks mom and dad.
(jazzy music)