Short Stuff: Tooth Fairy: Not Real

Today we break down the history of everyone's favorite home invader, the tooth fairy.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
there's Jerry. Ghost of Dave Kustan is hanging around here somewhere,
and that means that this is short stuff and in fact,
it's not a ghost. I'm mistaken, Chuck. He is a
tooth fairy. That's right. David is very much alive. Don't
worry everyone, Short Stuff producer, Dave is not a ghost. No,

(00:24):
you could astray project yourself and still be what I
would consider basically a ghost. I don't think. I think
being dead is overstated as a reason for being a ghost.
It's being it's overrated. Yeah. Yeah, So we're talking about
the tooth fairy, and um, the reason I thought of
this is because my daughter has not lost a tooth yet.

(00:45):
She's coming up on six years old with his baby teeth,
and um, I'm just waiting like it could have happened
by now and it can't happen at any time. And
I was, you know, I was like, all right, I
gotta get up on the latest research on the story
that I'm gonna need to tell the lie that I'm

(01:05):
going to pound into her brain, and like how much
money these kids get? These days a lot. It's like,
did you get I got like a quarter and a
quarter two, which apparently is like nineteen thirties level. You know.
I also got a quarter for giving up my passive fire.
And only later did I find out like my sisters
had gotten things like an easy bake oven or something

(01:26):
like that, and I got bought off for a quarter.
I'm still to this day a little upset about that. Now,
how old are you when you gave it up? Like twelve?
It all depends on the kid. My daughter gave her
PASTI fire really early, so she didn't even know what
money was. You know, there you go, that's the way
to do it. She just didn't like it. Yeah, that
was actually thirteen, was approaching the age where I also

(01:48):
would have traded my past fire for a pack of smokes.
You're like, give me one more to suck on something.
I never connected it too. So the tooth dairy is
pretty interesting, and that since people had children all over
the world through antiquity, there seems to be weird little

(02:08):
stories here and there about traditions and things that you
would do with the tooth. It seems like it was
never just like well that happened. Let me just toss
it out of here. You know, it could have been
some little ceremony. You could have put it in a fire. Um.
But this this was not like the tooth fairies. We
know it. No no, no, no, but it is there there,
and we'll talk about in a minute. But there's rituals

(02:29):
all over the world of what to do like it's
not like it. It just goes unnoticed. The tooth fairies
one of the most all American um, supernatural beings there
there is, and as not even not even old. It's
not even an old one. Apparently, the tooth fairy that
that is going to eventually come to visit your daughter,

(02:50):
that is running around this very night handing out dollars
for teeth is basically sure. Um, although you could make
a really strong case in court that putting the tooth
under the pillow it could be construed as an invitation
into your home. But that that tooth fairy, that particular being,

(03:11):
that entity is from basically the mid century, mid twentieth
century America and is very new and very young for
being a supernatural entity. Yeah, I think there are a
couple of references. There was one from eight from the
Chicago Daily Tribune and an editorial UM that valued the

(03:32):
contribution from the tooth Fairy at a nickel. I think
in twenty seven there was a short play with a
tooth fairy in it from Esther Watkins Arnold. Oh, it's
it was okay. I saw there was also a kid's
book from the twenties that um was an English version
of the eighteenth century French tooth fairy kind of thing,

(03:52):
but the tooth fairy was a mouse, Okay. The tooth
fairy like really kind of hit a zeitgeists in the twenties.
I guess, yeah, it sounds like it okay. And then
apparently the whole thing broke wide open with a Collier's
magazine article in May of nineteen forty nine. Yeah, so
ninety nine. I mean, that's not that long ago that

(04:14):
that parents have been lying to their kids about this
home invader. Who would who would leave money to avoid prosecution?
That's right? I mean it is kind of weird, like,
is there any explanation that you've run across so far
as to why the tooth fairy wants teeth? That's something
that no one ever taught me. No, And you know,
I looked a lot of different places, and there's just

(04:36):
not a lot out there. It's pretty interesting. There's no
there's no weird origin story. I mean, we could make
one up if you want to kick that thing off.
Let's see that. Let's just take the Cabbage Patch kids
origin story and just replace it with tooth fairy. Yeah,
or maybe the tooth fairy builds this fantasy land out
of out of children's teeth. That's horrific, it does it

(04:58):
sounds like the teeth monster from what was that? There
was a weird Canadian TV shows basically No, no, that
was weird in a different way. Um, I will, I
will come up with the name of it. But it
was basically a bunch of urban legends that they blew
out into an actual narrative over the course of the season.
It was pretty interesting, but there was a monster made

(05:20):
of children's teeth and it was creepy. I'll send it
to you. You can show it to your daughter. All right, Well,
let's take a little break and we'll come back and
talk about kind of some of these strange rituals and
traditions all over the world right after this. Alright, So

(05:54):
we mentioned that depending on where you are in the world,
throughout history there have been these interesting traditions when it
comes of your children losing their first teeth um in
a lot of different countries Afghanistan, Russia, Mexico, New Zealand,
there is a mouse or a rat involved, whether or
not you put it in a box for a mouse
or put it in a little mouse hole like Tom

(06:15):
and Jerry's style. And I think the whole thing there
was it was a wish that the tooth would grow
back to be as strong as a rat's tooth or
a mouse's tooth, which makes sense. Yeah, And that's called
the transference, uh wish that an anthropologist might call a
simp called sympathetic magic, which I think is a pretty
good band name though. Wishing that your child's tooth grows

(06:38):
back like a rat's tooth. That would be one of
those careful what you wish for kind of situations. If
you ask me, that's true people do um well. Actually,
so there's like actually supposedly nine things, including everything from
throwing the tooth into the sun, which that's got to
be hard to do, not possible. Much more easy is

(07:00):
to throw it into a fire like that between the legs.
Huey Lewis style, a little weird um onto or over
the roof of your house. Yeah, that's not a lot
of Asian countries do this, okay. So one of the
things I saw it was that a lot of these rituals,
pretooth fairy rituals, were often wrapped up or tied into

(07:22):
burial rituals of that same culture. So does that mean
that there are cultures are there that throw their there
they're deceased, onto the roof of the house. You think
maybe it's like a sky burial kind of thing. I
don't know. I don't know. I was being funny at
first and then pulled it out into into into something
really thought provoking at the end. Uh, what else do

(07:45):
people do? I think a lot of people bury them, right,
and that kind of makes or hide them and that
kind of maybe that's where we got under the pillow.
I don't know. And then, um, it's from probably has
nothing to do with the dead or the deceased, but
there's one where the mother or the kid, or you
make a poor animal swallow the tooth and talk about

(08:06):
a write of passage. Because that's why all of these um,
all of these cultures have a ritual surrounding the loss
of the first tooth, because that's basically the first rite
of passage any kid cognizantly goes through. And so you know,
cultures tend to make a big deal about it. But
imagine your culture having you swallow your baby's tooth and

(08:29):
then you pass it as the mom, Like, that's gotta
provoke some sort of you know, a mixed bag of emotions. Yeah,
for some reason, it just that was the first thing
that came to mind when I saw that mom sometimes
swallow baby teeth basically ye, from that, from that little

(08:51):
little vignette. So it seems like when it really became
the tooth fairy that we think of in America, it
came about at the same time that Disney was putting
out movies like Pinocchio and Cinderella, two movies that each
fit featured these benevolent fairies who granted wishes. And I
think it may have just been the public consciousness and

(09:13):
we borrowed, like we said, from other cultures that may
be buried their teeth or hid their teeth into the
under the pillow thing and an exchange for money. Yeah,
and the money thinks still seems confounding, like it's fairy
coming for your tooth. That's pretty cute, and that makes
sense that Disney would influenced it based on the time.
But the money thing supposedly dates back to twelfth century

(09:36):
Norse custom, which was that you would pay a tooth
fee to the kid who got there who lost their
their first baby tooth. And you know, rather than them
putting it in the pillar there being any supernatural being
who came to collect that, you just hand the kids
some money or whatever tell them to go away now. Um,
So I think those combined to form this modern incarnation

(09:58):
of the tooth fairy. Yeah, and what's the going rate
these days? From what I saw, it's about three dollars
and seventy cents, which means there's some weird parents out
there who are right at the median who leave three
dollars and seventy cents under their kids pillow in exchange
for the tooth. But that also means that there's plenty
of parents out there who are leaving like ten bucks,

(10:18):
you know, who are skewing the average upwards. And don't
email me because I know a median is not the
same thing as average. I guess, I guess, Emily, and
I need to do some soul searching, uh, to find
out what the value of this tooth is because it's
you know, it can also be an opportunity to teach
you know, kids have no idea what things cost. They

(10:40):
think everything is free, so it can be an opportunity
to teach them. Yeah, disappointment. You know about the value
of money, and you know what what this might buy
or maybe you can save it or say part of it.
I don't know, but the the introduction to money and
income kind of starts with the tooth ferry. It's pre
allowed ones. Yeah, well I read that there was a

(11:03):
from a folklore that said, like the reason why this
tooth fairies an American invention and gives you money exchange
or something. As you're teaching your kids capitalism, it would
just make total sense. Yeah. I mean, she's got piggy banks,
so we'll we'll put change in there occasionally, but that
that's about it as far as money goes. She thinks,
you know, everything costs nothing. Well, you can teach her

(11:24):
the value of a human tooth now, and she'll go
around the rest of her life thinking she can get
about three dollars and seventy cents per tooth if she just,
you know, really tries at it. I think if I
tried to do three seventy on the nose, Emily would
just be like, are you kidding me? Put a fiver
in there would be hilarious. Hey, report back when when
it happens, will you? Yeah? And I also want to
quickly shout out Janet Varney, one of our good friends

(11:48):
here in the industry, a podcaster and one of the
co founders of s F sketch Fest and the j
V Club. Yeah, j V Club, great, great show. Um,
I think I had no tooth when I was first
a guest of Janet's JV Club Live It sketch Fest,
And when I got home, she sent me and Janet's

(12:09):
Janet is wanted to just send people funny gifts like this.
She sent me a little tooth fairy pillow. That is
very sweet. Yeah, because you can you can get an
actual pillow, right, that's special for the little pocket fairy. Okay,
that's great. Yeah, so um, well that's the tooth fairy
unless you got anything else to you. I got nothing
else except three fake teeth. You can get some money

(12:32):
for that, almost a little over ten dollars Chuck Aaron
Cooper would pay fifteen. There you go. Um and since
Chuck said Aaron Cooper, then of course that means short
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