Sometimes there are moments in parenting when you wonder if what just happened really happened, and if things like that ever happen to anyone else.
This evening we were eating dinner around the kitchen table as we do every evening. There were a couple of conversations going on. A few of the boys were chatting and Mike and I were talking about a job that had come through earlier on. As we ate and talked Eddie raised his hand to speak. So we all stopped talking and I asked him if he was okay.
He smiled broadly as he began, ‘There’s a tooth on the table.’
Everyone started exchanging glances with everyone else. What was he talking about?
‘On the table – there,’ he nodded just in front of his plate to where, sure enough, there was a tooth.
A tooth.
A real, enamel covered tooth.
I was certain hadn’t served up teeth, nails or any other body parts for dinner so why was there a tooth on the table and where did it come from?
‘Who’s missing a tooth?’ Ben started asking.
Who on earth would miss a tooth and not notice?
Until Mike remembered that Paddy had a wobbly tooth.
‘Paddy, it’s your tooth!” he told him.
Paddy who had been too busy eating to take much notice of what was going on so far took a moment to realise that Daddy was talking to him. He did a double take, then stopped slurping his spaghetti and widened his mouth so Mike could check. Yes, he had lost a front tooth. No, he hadn’t noticed.
Mystery solved!
But how did it get from where Paddy was to a spot in the middle of the kitchen table two feet away from where he sat?
And how did Paddy not even realise that it had fallen out?
*Shrug*
Maybe things like this do happen to other families.
Don’t they?
This is totally the sort of thing that would happen around our table. Although my boys would probably want to go into the gory details of it hanging by one thread!