As my son got older, we shifted away from the Tooth Fairy and toward the Tooth Larry, her ex-husband. He’s not as reliable as she, but he tries when he can.

The Tooth Larry is inconsistent and sometimes he drops the ball but he’s a good guy and you just have to cut him some slack. I mention this in case it’s helpful for other parents struggling to hold it together during these totally FUBAR times.

For anyone interested in the Tooth Larry’s origin story, he’s named for my father-in-law who died long ago, who I never met. He was nearly 7 ft tall and claimed to be part Cherokee but he was mostly Budweiser, my husbands says.

My husband remembers his father as a pair of long, white legs in a short orange bathrobe and through wild anecdotes about him sitting on the living room couch, making bullets.

One night after a few beers he apparently traced the outline of his feet in sharpie on the bath mat and signed it “Mr. Wonderful.”

Anyway, he lives on as the Tooth Larry, a magical, if unpredictable, presence in our house.