Cow Tooth on My Counter

Lucy is losing teeth. This isn't her first time, but there were four wiggly loose chompers in her mouth. Last week, the first popped out. When it happened, we were out at the CoOp Garden, picking corn and broccoli and potatoes for Family Home Evening (this was when I got stung by a bee on my face, but that's a completely different story). Most of the corn was plucked, and the children were passing the remaining time on the swing set there when; Lucy and Yvy were swinging together, and Yvy's head bonked Lucy's mouth. Out came the tooth.

Lucy was so excited. We were over near the gravel driveway, sorting and stacking the mountain of corn we had just picked, and she came over to show us all. Somehow, she dropped it in the grass under a tree before she could get a word in edge-wise. So she got to her knees to look. Nothing. We didn't know what had happened, so we were a bit surprised to see her wandering off, crying.

I went after her to find out what was wrong, and she told me the whole sad saga. I volunteered to help, and we went back to the tree to search. There were other families there picking and sorting corn, and they came over to see what was wrong. Pretty soon, we had five adults and several kids crawling around and combing through the grass; finding innumerable piece of gravel the precise size and color of a tooth, and trying to guess which way a tooth would have bounced.

All that help and attention and concern went a long way to dry up Lucy's sniffles, but she was still distraught. You see, if you lose a tooth, and take it Grandpa (Mark's dad), he has been known to give you all the change he has in his pocket at that moment. Lucy is keen on building up her savings account, and so she was counting on those loose teeth as income. Losing a tooth and then losing a tooth was a bitter blow.

Enter the cow tooth. Ed - the man who hosts the CoOp at his farm - felt for Lucy. He is a Grandpa, himself. So he stepped into his workshop, and came back out with this huge cow tooth. (I'm not sure why he had a cow tooth in his workshop; he's a piano tuner and repairman by trade...does he have other random cow parts in there? Don't know. I think I'll poke my head in there next time we're out at the garden...)


"Here!" he offered it to Lucy. "Give this to your Grandpa, and see what he says about that." I don't think she knew exactly what to do with it, I am not sure if she even thanked him. But it was very sweet. I know Hyrum was interested and maybe a tad envious. And it did take her mind off the original misfortune.

Since then, two more teeth have left her jaw. One, she pulled all on her own - a point of bragging rights in our family of dental ninnies. Both of these teeth are safely tucked away in a baggie in her pillow slip, waiting for our next trip down to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

All those missing teeth make it hard for her to enjoy the corn-on-the-cob we have been feasting on. Both Hyrum and Gabba are very sympathetic. They each remember their summer of No Front Teeth.

Hyrum has been inspired by Lucy, and yanked one of his own lose teeth, to prove he wasn't out-done by a seven year-old. It wasn't quite ready to come, and he bled everywhere.

The cow tooth has proven to have a certain appeal for this batch of oddball kids and their friends. It has been used as show-and-tell and as bartering tender. I'm not sure which one of my children is currently the owner - Eliza, I think? But this morning, there on my kitchen counter, in front of the microwave, was a cow tooth.