Imagine you were five.

And everyone else had a tooth fairy.

But when your teeth come out your mother and father congratulate you. Keep it. Celebrate. But no magical reward.

You might ask some questions.

Tooth fairies are good, right? The Tooth Fairy is good, right?

Not in our family.

In our family the tooth fairy is absent. My son asks why? I tell him the truth. It happened like this…

Sometimes grownups do bad things, say bad things. They get angry at the victim of a crime instead of the person who commits the crime.

In those cases, when a grownup gets angry at a little kid for something that was not her fault… well, he might not say it was because of the crime done to her, because he was shamed by it’s proximity to him.

He might say it was because she did not eat all of her veggies.

But the strength of his anger would let you know. Let you know he was not safe.

So we don’t see him anymore.
Because we don’t want him to hurt you–any of you–again.

This is the part I am sure of–he would do it again.

And every child deserves to have a safe tooth fairy.

Or the truth, and none at all.