Me vs The End of Hoilday Falsehoods

As a parent, you want to make the most of the holidays for your children. Traditionally, this means lying to them about the existence of things like a large voyeuristic man in a red suit who sneaks into your house at night to leave you stuff, or a large anthropomorphic rabbit who sneaks into your house at night to leave you stuff, or a small fae creature who sneaks into you house at night to take your stuff, but then also leaves you stuff. To summarize, there's a surprising amount of night time break and enters that we collectively seem to turn a blind eye to. 

But like all good things these childhood deceptions must end, sometimes with traumatic fanfare, sometimes as quietly as a pin dropped on the forest floor, and occasionally with something approaching mania. 

My sister takes the prize for "Most traumatic death of a childhood fantasy" that I am aware of. Reality came crashing down when our house was broken into. Instead of coming in and leaving gifts, which up until this point was all that strangers coming into your house were supposed to do, they just stole all our stuff. During the assault on our house, while riffling though my parents room, they dumped a jewelry box onto the bed; along with all my mother's jewelry, came years of baby teeth, crashing onto the duvet in all their off white, nightmare fueled glory.

Suffice to say the robbers neglected to claim the teeth as their own, breaking the time-honoured fae contract to break in, take teeth, and leave gifts.  They also failed to clean up after themselves. This was both unforgivably rude, and left years of dental-specific evidence of my parent's falsehood scattered around the room for us to discover. In the end it turns out there are only two real reasons that your parents have large numbers of children's teeth in their possession: they are serial killers keeping trophies or the Tooth Fairy isn't real. The latter seemed more likely, and so the Tooth Fairy and all her ilk died for my sister that day.  

With my daughter it was less overtly traumatizing; the realization came to her one day, shortly before Easter, that a bunny delivering chocolate eggs went just a bit beyond the scope of believability. I gently explained that yes, we were absolutely making that nonsense up, but she'd still get chocolate. The panicked look subsided and then there was a sharp intake of breath. She looked at me, tears glistening, and just said the Tooth Fairy? Yes. And then another small intake of breath, the truth sinking in....SANTA? Also yes. 

I curbed the agony with the speech about how she was now in on the secret and had to help us "be Santa" for her brother, who was still very committed to the myth. We got through it and carried on but now there was a shadow lurking over my shoulder.....when my youngest figured it out, how would I play it off? For him it would just be over. No helping younger siblings, no being in on it, just the finality of death, the end of a belief. It would just over. He's a very sensitive kid, I was worried. 

It turns out that I didn't need to be. My sensitive, empathetic little guy is also corporate spy-level devious, and fully committed to fucking with us as well. 

The illusion crumbled a few nights ago. He'd lost a tooth, which is never something I look forward to because I hate teeth. Everything about them is horrible the moment they stop being functional teeth, and seeing a detached molar sitting on a bedside table makes me want to scream. 

But I digress. 

As he's telling me the harrowing tale of the lost tooth, he looks at me and in a perfectly matter of fact tone says: Hey mom, what do you do with all the teeth after you take them?

WHAT? Wait....what do you mean? Do you mean what the tooth fairy does with them?

No. You. I know you take them. 

Oh.....well if we're doing this, then I guess I throw them out. I don't have a reason to keep your teeth. That would be weird.  (MOM! See...keeping teeth is weird)

Hmm, yeah that makes sense. 

So, um, how long have you known???

Oh, probably the last 4 teeth. 

And then something inside me snapped and I just started cackling like a mad woman. I explained to him that I had just been setting an alarm on my phone to remember the stupid tooth, and it was nice that didn't have to happen. But of course he still wanted his tooth money, so like a normal, not crazy, definitely not insane parent, I made him get up and flap his way to the garbage can to get rid of it in the magical tooth fairy depository, and then flap his way to my wallet, following which he had to properly place his winnings under his pillow. By the end I'm surprised we could still move, we were laughing so hard. 

But now that the fairy was out of the proverbial bag, I needed to know what the parameters were. 

The Bunny?

Oh yeah, I've known about that one for a while too. But I like chocolate. Did you really think I believed a bunny was doing that?

Well, I certainly wasn't sneaking around like an idiot hiding eggs for my own sake, so yeah.

He found this terribly funny.

And I guess that means you're in on the whole Santa bit as well? 

This was not going at all like I had thought or feared it would, but I was also starting to wonder if my son was smarter than me. Probably. 

Well, yeah. I picked up on clues. Again, it feels a bit unbelievable at this point. 

True enough, you tiny sociopath, but then why make me suffer through all the ridiculous sneaking around? That shit isn't easy. 

Again he laughs, and now I'm starting to wonder if he finds human suffering entertaining. 

No mom, I didn't want to ruin it for you guys. 

Nope, he's definitely just smarter than me. 

Well, at least I won't have to hide that stupid elf on the shelf anymore. 

He looks at me dead in the eye. Oh no, I still want you to do THAT. It's fun. 

He knows I hate the elf. This is not fun, this is war.