I was also accompanied by children, which appeared to me, the same height as the massive, overhanging weeping willow situated in my rear garden. Subsequently I was incessantly being told that I was ‘a big girl now’, even though I hadn’t heightened at all over the sweltering hot summer, spent in Bali, so couldn’t comprehend why obscure grownups kept telling me throughout my first day of the daunting school term.
This probably didn’t help, and, together with the deep sinking feeling churning in my stomach, about what was going to happen if it got any looser, only heightened my anxiety.
That day was a cloudless, sunlight afternoon in early autumn, and, along with my fellow classmates, I was charging round the considerable sized playground, in which I was to spend my lunchtimes of the next six years.
It was then that it happened.
Staring at the white, shimmering gem on the contrasting jet black floor I realised just how wide of the mark I had been; about if I believed nothing was happening then nothing would.
I was petrified, to me, as a five year-old, getting into trouble was about as formidable as the prospect to an adult of going inside on a life sentence.
Shaking with fear about the likelihood of someone discovering it, I swiftly grabbed and concealed the incriminating piece of evidence.
I was in a state of trepidation on the rollercoaster ride home, terrified at the prospect of someone discovering my undisclosed secret.
Luckily, however, my childminder was far too preoccupied attempting to get away with doing forty m.p.h in a twenty mile zone. While, at the same time, texting her only friend about her ‘lying, cheating ex of a boyfriend’ – her words, not mine, to notice the colossal gap which had miraculously appeared in the front of my mouth.
Consequently, when we finally reached home after receiving one speeding ticket and a lecture about the use of mobile phones while driving, I tore outside and slammed the offending article into the wastes of the dustbin, feeling the crisp afternoon chill drifting through the air on the back of my neck.
You see I didn’t understand that losing ones baby teeth was part of everyone’s childhood.
At that moment, I tried, unsuccessfully, to make my lip cover the yawning void painted among my front teeth.
On the subsequent return from work of my parents and the departure of my child minder my mother asked
“How did your day go, honey?”
As you can well imagine, this technique of talking without moving my upper lip was comical. As I realised the futility of keeping up this charade indefinitely I burst into a flood of howling tears.
This brings us back to where my tale of naivety began, with me, perched on the marble work-surface crying my eyes out.
I then, gaspingly told them, through many sniffs and hiccups, the catastrophic events culminating in my precipitous disposal of the tooth.
After much sympathy, and cake, my parents managed to persuade me that it was completely normal to lose teeth around my age; lots of children did; that they would grow back bigger and better than ever; and no, I was not becoming an outcast. Nor would I need the hideous denchers my Granddad constantly left perching predatorily on dusty window sills around our house.
Then my dad went through the entire mass of garbage at some lengths to try and locate the tooth I had so foolishly earlier pitched into its murky depths. However it eluded him.
Nevertheless the ‘tooth fairy’ still came.
