There's fairy dust on my keyboard.

My mother told me this when she and my dad were out visiting last week. It was the first time I'd heard this story and I thought it explained a great deal everything:

When I was about five years old, I moseyed into my bedroom with an ice cream come. You know the type that come in a big store-bought box? The kind that go stale in 10 minutes if you don't roll down the packaging immediately after opening?

Those kind of cones.

I loved them even without ice cream scooped on top. They were a nice cardboard-flavored snack.

I reckon biting into stale ice cream cones is a fine way to hurry along loose teeth and considering I was fairly cash-strapped at five, gnawing on these things until teeth fell out was probably a small price to pay for dividends from the Bank of Tooth Fairy.

So yes, on this particular day I lost a tooth. And when I woke up in the morning and the tooth was gone from under my pillow and a dollar bill was in its place, I noticed that cone crumbs were in my bed and on my floor in a trail leading out the door.

"MOM!" I yelled. "COME HERE!"

Pointing to the crumbs, oblivious to where they'd come from, I explained that the tooth fairy must have left dust in my room.

My mother, amused and well aware of my sloppy eating habits, let me believe the crumbs were fairy dust and entertained my request for a sandwich baggie so I could bring them to kindergarten class that morning for show and tell.

A few days later, when my teacher saw my mother, she said, "Nice touch with the tooth fairy stuff. Crumbling up food and calling it fairy dust. Cute."

My mother replied, "It wasn't me, Kathy. She walked into her bedroom that day with an ice cream cone and dropped crumbs all over her bed. When she woke up in the morning she was convinced they'd come from the tooth fairy."

Thank you Mom, for letting me believe in things like this. I love you.

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PS. That's me up there in the pumpkin patch, showing off my baby teeth.