That Wiggle Really Did Go a Long Way

Loyal readers may recall a column from two months ago when the 8-year-old asked me to pull his tooth out while in the movie theater watching the latest “Minions” film.

Update: it finally came out.

On the second day of third grade (it was a Friday), I took Mikey to an evening birthday party at a trampoline entertainment center in Danbury. The plan was to drop in, get him acclimated, and leave to run some errands while he lived his best life.

However, just after we arrived and he put on the required socks and ran a few loops around the table in the party room with some friends, the kid came up to me with his fingers in his mouth.

“Mom,” he mumbled around those fingers. “My toof needs to come out.”

Again I asked: “Here?! … Now?!”

He nodded and extracted his bloody fingers from his mouth, curled his lip, and showed me that his tooth was practically sticking sideways out of his gum. I quickly moved us away from the table holding the cupcake tower and tried to disappear into a corner while I handled this extremely unhygienic situation.

Alas, the birthday girl’s mother noticed and came rushing over, asking, “Oh, did he get hurt?”

“No, no. He’s fine.” I used the back of my hand to wipe the blood off his face. “It’s just a loose tooth. He’ll be fine.”

We exited the party room and headed for the bathroom, and that’s when Mikey – blood on his lips and hands – decided he’s now too old to go into the women’s restroom with me and insisted that I go with him into the men’s room…

Let’s put a pin in this conversation and return to it with a future column, but suffice it to say that I convinced him to come into the women’s restroom where, once he got a look of himself in the mirror, started crying hysterically.

To be fair, the tooth looked pretty gnarly.

I tried to pull it out but the darn thing was still resisting.

He rinsed and spit several times. We dried the tooth off with a party napkin I snagged before leaving the party room, but the tooth was still holding on for dear life.

“I’ll just go jump and wait for it to come out,” Mikey informed me.

That really, really didn’t seem like a good idea to me. The kid couldn’t even close his lips around the tooth.

Finally, I convinced him to give it one final tug. With a wince and squinted eyes, Mikey gripped the tooth and, with a swift, hard tug, pulled it out.

“Aha!” he cheered, before immediately handing me the little enamel fragment.

He immediately spun on his heel and I had to stop him in his tracks. “Whoa, wait a second, bud.”

“But Mom, everyone is jumping already.”

“Yes, I know.” What I didn’t say is that the tooth hole was now bleeding quite profusely.

Under duress, Mikey swished and spit into the sink a few more times. And of course the paper towel holder was empty so I grabbed a wad of toilet paper from the public bathroom (yes, I’m gagging just typing this) and told him to bite down on it for a moment.

When the bleeding finally subsided, and with a final hand wash, I sent Mikey out to jump with his friends and prayed that the wound didn’t open back up and start gushing all over the place.

And for the rest of the party I carried the bloody tooth carcass in my pocket.

It was at this moment that I started questioning all my life decisions.

Oh, and he got an Alexander Hamilton from the Tooth Fairy because she didn’t have anything smaller on her.

Holly Crocco is editor of the Putnam County Press/Times and mother of an 8-year-old boy. She can be reached at editorial@putnampresstimes.com.