Around age 10, I fancied myself a detective. Rumors had begun circulating at school that the Tooth Fairy was (gasp) actually your parents. And so began my quest to prove she wasn’t real.

Before placing my tooth under my pillow one night, I wrote a note asking if she could provide a picture of herself. The next day, on a perfect cutout of a tooth (dad took his Tooth Fairy duties very seriously), I received a note saying she, unfortunately, did not have a photo.

Dejected but not deterred, I wrote a note with my next tooth saying her passport photo would do. Surely she had one with the amount of travel required by her job. Her Dad’s response? You can’t take a photo of a fairy.

Not to be outsmarted, I concocted a plan. The next time I lost a tooth, I would make sure no one in my family knew. The stars aligned and my next tooth fell out at school on the exact same day Joelle lost one, meaning the attention would be on her. Even better, I lost a molar (not particularly noticeable), and it was a Monday which meant I’d go straight from school to Extended Day to my 2.5 hour dance class. By the time I got home, I’d be able to go to bed without much conversation with my parents, meaning the likelihood of them noticing was slim.

Excited for my scheme to unfold, I even scripted an entire speech for the next morning. I’d ask Joelle what she got from the Tooth Fairy in front of my parents and respond with “that’s funny, because she missed the memo that I lost a tooth!” Brilliant, right? I couldn’t wait to see them panic. They couldn’t even claim that the Tooth Fairy forgot to visit our house/was on vacation, because she had been down the hall in Joelle’s room!

The next morning, lo and behold, I found a note in the shape of a tooth along with her signature silver dollar. The note read that she would stop visiting me if I didn’t have faith in her existence. To say I was mindblown would be an understatement. Immediately, I checked the caller ID. My teacher must have spilled the beans. But nope, nada.

I later found out that my friend Layton had told her parents about my plan at dinner. In an effort to look out for my parents, Mrs. Osgood called my dad to warn him of the trap I was setting. He even knew to delete the call entry from the caller ID!

In case you were wondering, I did later feel daddy’s hand under my pillow one night, ending his reign as Tooth Fairy.