Mermaids: A fishy tale.

LYRIC O' THE DAY:

We’re covered by the sacred fire

When you cut me, you cut me to the bone

--Lorelei, The Cocteau Twins

I have to thank a completely random conversation with Lydia Kang about the movie Mermaids and feeding children with appetizers for today's inspiration on Sunday Mythbusters.  


Thanks to the power of Disney, most people picture a perky redhead when they think of mermaids.

However, these mythical creatures of the sea were around way before the advent of cartoon sexuality thinly veiled as family-friendly cinema.  In contrast to Ariel’s innocent ingenue, mermaids were seldom considered a good omen--in fact, sightings often meant bad weather or worse.  Sailors enchanted by mermaid's songs followed them to a watery death, drowned by a vixen turned vicious.  And what of those who did find love with a mermaid?

“A mermaid found a swimming lad,

Picked him for her own.

Pressed her body to his body.

Laughed and plunging down

Forgot in cruel happiness

That even lovers drown.”

--W.B. Yeats

Mermaids traditionally have been seen as half man, half fish.  However, merfolk encompass all creatures from the sea that shapeshift to human form.  Nearly every culture has a type of mermaid:  selkies, melusines, roanes, rusalkas, undines, loreleis and nixies to name a few.

The first mermaids represented sea gods.  The Babylonians worshipped a sea god named Ea--the earliest version of Neptune.  Atargatis was a Syrian goddess who banished herself to the sea because she was so distraught over getting knocked up by her mortal lover.

No word on how he took it.

Atargatis eventually adapted to pregnancy and became known as Derketo to the Greeks (and to Robert E. Howard’s Conan).  In Greek myth she is sometimes confused with Aphrodite.  Even today there are mermaid deities.  In Africa, a fertility goddess named Mami Wata heals the sick but will drown those who dare disobey her.  In the Caribbean and Haiti, La Siren is worshipped in the Vodou religion.  And in America, we have Cher.

Not all mermaid legends came from such lofty ancestors.  The Roman poet Ovid claimed mermaids formed from the burning wood of Trojan ships during the Trojan war.  Indeed, mermaids are mentioned by Homer in the Odyssey as attempting to lure Ulysses away from his ship as he sailed home from Troy.  Irish mermaids are reported to be the souls of old pagan women banished from the land by St. Patrick.  In China, mermaids are believed to be simple-minded water nymphs who bring happiness or sadness based on the color--and smell--of their tails.  Apparently a purple tail smells like happiness.  Red tail smells like sorrow.  Don’t ask what the brown tail smells like.  

Slavic myths (always my favorite) tell the story of the rusalka, a mermaid demon who lives in lakes and waterways.  Generally the rusalka is a woman who has died a violent death before her time, often from suicide or at the hands of a lover.  During Rusalka days in June, they come out of the water and take to the trees to try to woo men to their deaths with song.  Antonin Dvorak wrote his opera, Rusalka, based on this folktale. 

The Rusalka by illustrator Ivan Bilibin

There have been numerous mermaid sightings throughout history.  Columbus in 1493 saw three mermaids in the area of the Dominican Republic.  According to his journal, he was quite dismayed that they weren’t at all beautiful--in fact, they looked manly in the face.  Most scholars now believe he saw a group of manatees.  In his memoirs, John Smith claimed to see mermaids by Massachusetts, although he also claimed to see blue men with square heads, Pocahontas, and cannibalistic women warriors who wanted him for sexual slavery.  Henry Hudson in 1608 sighted a mermaid with 2 other crew members.  They described it as half porpoise and half woman, skin spotted like a mackerel, and with large, "magnificent" breasts.  Which just goes to show you men love T&A, no matter what the species.  And if you need a more recent sighting, in 1998 in Kona, Hawaii, a team of divers following a school of dolphins photographed a real mermaid--the Weekly World News said so.  And on the next page they had a story about Hilary Clinton’s alien baby.

Photo of a "real" mermaid in Hawaii

Perhaps those divers were actually vacationing at a Florida resort called Weeki Wachee, the City of the Mermaids.  In 1946, a former Navy Seal trainer got the idea to teach attractive young women to free dive using an air hose.  He took his plan one step further, and had them wear elaborate mermaid costumes.  Thanks to capitalism and post WWII sexual curiosity, Weeki Wachee became an aquarian Vegas and is still in existence.

Get your 2011 calendar on the website!

With so many mermaid sightings, one would think a corporal mermaid would be discovered and studied.  The anatomy of the mermaid was first described around the fifth century A. D. in a text called the Physiologus, which was basically a listing of beasties of the day--like a medieval Encyclopedia Britannica.  There are a few descriptions of “mermaid autopsies,” but none have been verified.

P.T. Barnum is credited with bringing the mermaid to the masses in the 19th century with his sideshow exhibit called “The Feejee (Fiji) mermaid.”  However, he likely got the idea--or even the exhibit itself--from the son of an English captain who traded his ship and its contents for what was eventually revealed to be a monkey’s torso sewn to the body of a fish.  Versions of the Feejee mermaid have been seen even in Renaissance times, well before P.T. Barnum saw an opportunity to profit in the era of Darwinism during the 1860s.  Unfortunately for Barnum, this oddity was not at all popular in America--and even caused riots when folks expected a half naked Daryl Hannah and got a wrinkled piece of taxidermy.  On a tangential note, a Feejee mermaid was a murder suspect in an X-files episode.  The killings eventually were found to be done by a parasitic twin.  I really miss the X-files. 

What we were hoping the Fiji mermaid would look like.

What the Fiji mermaid did look like.

The most recent merfolk hoaxes occurred after the devastation of the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.  The following video depicts a "real" mermaid that washed up on a shore after the storm.

Some mermaid myth is likely based on a congenital defect that occurs in 1 of approximately 90,000 births known as sirenomelia, in which an infant is born with its legs fused together.  Generally, this is a fatal malformation due to kidney and urinary tract abnormalities.  Currently there are only two people in the world known to be living with sirenomelia according to Wikipedia.  A Peruvian child named Milagros Cerron received worldwide attention when she underwent a series of operations to separate her legs in 2005.

Milagros at the beginning of her surgeries.

Milagros in 2010.  Pics from odditycentral.com.

Most scholars now attribute the historical sightings of mermaids to the the animal group Sirenia, which includes manatees, dugongs, and the extinct Steller's sea cow.  However, the sounds that a manatee makes are generally high pitched squeaks, whistles and clicking noises, not easy to be confused with the haunting and beautiful melodies associated with mermaids.  We may never know what sailors were really seeing on those lonely nights at sea.

Give us a kiss!

Mermaids will always hold a soft spot in my heart--I'm an Aquarius after all.  The idea of a creature crawling on the shore to form legs and walk may be more fact than fiction depending on your beliefs.

There are some amazing paranormal novels dealing with merfolk--they are enjoying "new shiny thing" status in fiction currently.  It seems fitting that one of the most popular icons of the 21st century represents the sailor’s muse--and perhaps the writer’s as well.

Seven Things You Didn't Really Want to Know About Me, but I'm Telling You Anyway.

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

Expectations only mean you really think you know what’s coming next

And you don’t.

--These Important Years, Husker Du

I am totally honored to have been chosen for some delicious blog awards.  First, from Alynza at The Write Journey is the Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award AND a Versatile Blogger award.  I want to eat the first one, and then write a dissertation of the existential plight of man while changing the oil on my Jeep with the other.  Because I'm versatile.  I also received the Versatile Blogger from S.B. at Writing the Other, so I was doubly versatiled.  I am finally receiving recognition for my ability to multitask!  No longer can people give me grief when I call them while in the bathroom.

As part of the tithe for these bits of glory, I am supposed to share seven things about me and then pass the torch to five other bloggers.  Doing this exercise made me realize that I need to start doing some interesting things with my days, because I'm a little vanilla here.

Seven Things about me:

1.  When I cut things, I unconsciously move my jaw up and down with each bite of the scissors.  I can’t stop myself and it drives people crazy.  Once I made a set of paper dinosaurs for my son and had lockjaw for three days afterwards.

2.  I was going to be a theater major until a bizarre little man who resembled Beetlejuice (aka my college advisor) talked me out of it.  Now I can only reminisce about my high school performance as Abigail in The Crucible.  I was the state of Nebraska's best actress in Class B in 1989, by the gods!  I coulda been a contender!  Consider yourself fortunate for my misstep on the career pathway, Winona Ryder.

I saw Goody Proctor with the Devil!!

3.  I am irrationally afraid of clowns, which stems from watching Poltergeist at too young an age.  The hospital where I work has a clown day once a month, and every freaking time I end up trapped on the elevator with them.  They try to talk to me and all I can do is punch the button frantically and whimper.  I don’t think there’s a diagnosis code for “clown-related psychosis.”  I can't even post a picture of my fear, so instead I offer fuzzy baby kittens:

4.  I nearly died as a baby from Rh disease, also known as hemolytic disease of the newborn.  Basically my mother formed antibodies to my blood.  I was born premature at the University, hospitalized for transfusions and got septic with E.coli.  I know this because I found my hospital records on microfiche when I got into the University medical school.  I never knew before that.  And I've felt lucky to be alive ever since.  Also might explain my vampire fixation.

5.  I love high heels.  I arrange them by amounts of time I can stand wearing them.  Thick platform heels are the best for work, those are usually my 12 hour heels.  The others all vary between 6 and 10 hour heels.  Flats steal my power.

My favorite heels.  These are all 12 hour babies.

6.  I know how to can.  As in preserve vegetables for posterity.  Every year I make sauces, salsa, and pickled things.  When the zombie apocalypse comes, I will be quite comfortable in my underground bunker.

7.  I worked construction with my dad for two summers when I was in college.  One of my jobs was to be “the vibrator girl.”  This involves a large canister vacuum-looking device with a wand on the end that--you guessed it--vibrates.  You plunge said wand into wet cement in order to vibrate out the holes of air that may be trapped.  It’s much less erotic than it sounds.

Judging by this picture the construction tool business is not above sexual exploitation.

Now I pass the love to some very worthy bloggers that I want to know more about:


A.G. at Rejected Riter
B.E. Sanderson at The Writing Spectacle
Maggie at The Unibrow
Lexcade at Going from Nobody to Somebody
Liz at Home is where the Cat Is

The Crop Circle: Message, Music, or Marsupial?

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

Another night I feel all right, my love, for you can’t wait

--Don’t Go, Yaz

It’s fall in Nebraska.  That means football, apple cider, and following a John Deere combine for twenty miles down a busy stretch of highway.

This week for Sunday Mythbusters I present an homage to that spectacular art form of agriculture, the crop circle.  Since the 1970s, sightings of crop circles--and the mythology behind their appearance--has grown exponentially.  

Milk Hill crop circle 

My cousins and I tried to make one in grandpa’s field using a two by four and an unwilling German Shepherd one summer.  Unfortunately, I had just read Stephen King’s Children of the Corn.  He Who Walks Behind the Rows ultimately beat out my prankster nature.

The earliest depiction of a crop circle comes from a woodcut done in 1678 called “The Mowing Devil.”

Text attached to the piece says that a farmer refused to pay a mower to harvest his crops, saying he’d pay the devil to do it before he’d pay the price the man charged.  Rumor has it, the following morning his field was cut into a satanic design so intricate that it was impossible to blame a human for its creation.

Or was it?

The first modern sighting of a crop circle is the case of the Australia Saucer Nest incident in 1966.  A farmer apparently saw what he described as a saucer-shaped flying object rise out of a lagoon near Tully.  It left behind an ellipse of flattened reeds nearly 30 feet in diameter.  Despite media sensationalism, the phenomenon was ultimately attributed to a whirlwind over water called a “willy willy” by the Aussies.

Since that sighting, 26 countries have reported over 10,000 crop formations.  Ninety percent of those are in southern England. They are often associated with ancient monuments (i.e. Stonehenge) and with specific ley lines.  Ley lines were historically suggested to be ancient pathways of travel and ceremonial worship by an archaeologist in the 1920s.  Since then, they have morphed into a less tangible and more supernatural path imbued with psychic energy.

North American ley lines.

The phenomenon gathered worldwide attention in 1991 when two English sexagenarians by the name of Doug Bower and Dave Chorley came forward with the story of a prank spanning two decades.  The pair got the idea to make crop circles from the Tully incident while fueled by the local pub’s finest lager.  Using a plank, a rope, and a compass made from a baseball hat with a wire attached they created more than 250 crop circles.  They were able to make one in a little less than an hour with their crude tools.

A Doug and Dave circle from bibliotecapleyades.net

Still, even with this admission, conspiracy theorists refused to believe, claiming Doug and Dave were a government attempt to discredit the phenomenon and the presence of paranormal activity.  Some asserted that the men were linked to the British Ministry of Defense and the CIA.

Crop circles became the agricultural Beatles of Europe, even spawning an artist cooperative called Circlemakers who still create the formations for art and profit.  Their most famous American client may be the band Korn, who performed in a crop circle Circlemakers designed outside of Bakersfield, California in 2010.

All of you Scullys out there are nodding your heads, totally convinced that man-made hoaxes explain it all.  If you are a little more scientifically minded, perhaps you believe crop circles are a bizarre meteorologic creation, the result of tornadoes or ball lightning.  Stephen Hawking supported this theory in 1992 by saying crop circles were likely formed by a vortex movement of air--if they weren’t a hoax.  

Possibly the most comical theory came out when wallabies in Australia were blamed for crop circles found in opium poppy fields.  Turns out Australia has acres of medicinal opium fields, and a variety of creatures come by to get their Limbaugh on.  These marauding groups of wallabies apparently jump in circles while high on opium.  Which begs for the question, how many stoned wallabies does it take to form a crop circle in Australia?

"I see aliens."  

For those of you who channel your inner Mulder, I can’t leave out the UFO angle.  Some are not fans of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies, but I love Signs.  In the movie, the crop circles are marking beacons for a group of hostile aliens looking to harvest the earth.  Indeed, many believe crop circles are some form of communication from an extraterrestrial source, although hopefully it’s not to give us the big intergalactic finger.  In 1974, to celebrate the remodeling of the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, scientists (including Carl Sagan) sent the Arecibo message into orbit.  It contained binary code for numbers 1-10, the atomic numbers of the elements essential to life, a depiction of a DNA sequence, our solar system, a human figure and a picture of the radio transmitter itself.  Three decades later in a field in the UK an “answer” appeared--with significant changes including the depiction of an alien humanoid.  Debate over the validity of this crop formation continues today.

The aerial view of the field with the Arecibo reply.

The two codes, side by side.  In cross stitch.  Croppies, those folks who believe in the UFO theory of crop formations, are very creative.

The best known video suggesting that UFOs make crop circles was filmed at Oliver’s Castle in 1994.  It shows 4 lights spinning above a field shortly before an elaborate crop formation appears.  Unfortunately, the video was later declared a hoax.  Undaunted, UFO supporters continually point out that hoaxers ruin and crush the plants involved--whereas “real crop circles” bend the plant in a way that suggests use of high heat or microwave energy that had to come from an extraterrestrial source.  However, using a hand held magnetron and a 12 volt battery, one scientist was able to recreate the same bending effect, right down to the microscopic changes in the plant stem.

Carl Sagan in his The Demon Haunted World:  Science as a Candle in the Dark concluded there was no evidence to link UFOs with crop circles.  And I guess that’s good enough for me.

Some of the most intriguing theories behind formation of crop circles may lie within the earth itself.

The Gaia hypothesis popularized in the 1970s states that the earth is one single complex system made up of all organisms and their surroundings.  The earth is a giant work of symbiosis; crop circles (as well as other geologic phenomena like earthquakes and flooding) are messages in response to problems with the entire creature.

Scientists have built on this theory indicating that electromagnetic fields and energies from within the earth could be the basis of creating crop formations.  An electrical engineer in the UK named Colin Andrews described magnetic impulses detected within crop formations.  These impulses rotated up to 3 degrees about the center of the circle, and if strong enough could theoretically cause plants to lie down and twist into intricate designs. 

The crop circle theory which resonated the most with me (forgive the pun) is the theory of harmonic geometry, in which sound waves create visual patterns. 

A Swiss scientist named Hans Jenny caught on film the geometric patterns created as sound vibrations traveled through a variety of substances.  With changes in frequency and medium came increasing complexity of shapes.  In essence, Jenny “froze music,” creating art.  Others refer to these as Chladni patterns, after the German father of acoustics, Ernst Chladni.

A Chladni pattern created by sound.

Indeed, people describe hearing odd trilling sounds in the areas in and around crop circles, although it’s unclear where the sound originates from--perhaps geological shifting.  Using theorems of Euclidean geometry and diatonic relationships, Emeritus Professor of Astronomy Gerald Hawkins laid the groundwork to developing computer software that would actually measure the crop creations and turn geometry back to sound. 

I would have thought it would sound more like rock and roll.

Then again, maybe they were just listening to the wrong crop circle.

The King.  Elvis isn't dead, he's just in space.

I'm funny, but looks aren't everything

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

Simple joys have a simple voice,

It says why not go ahead?

--Simple Joys (done by Ben Vereen), Pippin

Today kicks off Alex J. Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group.  It’s a little loving web support for writers to share their hopes, their fears, and their neuroses with other stark raving lunatics creative souls.  Many thanks to Alex for putting this together with the grace and style we've all become accustomed to!  So get comfortable, put on some show tunes, and show me your jazz hands.  Because everyone’s a star today. 

I am not a classic beauty.  

My face is all angles and lines, and we’re talking more Picasso than Porizkova.

I am not photogenic.  I’ve never been the girl in spring break photos with big doe eyes and blinding Chiclet white teeth.

I’m the girl who shows her uvula in pictures; the one that ruined your class photo with a well-timed gesture.  You’re welcome.

I’m the funny one.  Although at times I’ve been referred to as “strange,” “spaz,” and the ever popular, “dork.”  Talent is so subjective.

Around age seven, I realized I was failing as a princess.  Pink’s never been my color.  That’s when I discovered Lucille Ball, and playing the jester seemed like a more viable plan, tiaras optional.  I’ve spent my life following the irreverent girls, the ones who laughed too loud and too often, even at their own jokes.  Olivia Newton John may have rocked her poodle skirt in Grease but I worshipped Rizzo’s smartass charm.  Sally Field exuded quiet strength in Steel Magnolias but I wanted to be in your face like Shirley MacLaine. 

Everything I write has humor in it.  Making someone laugh is a high for me; my shot of tequila without the risk of waking up naked in a hall closet.  To me, life is only worth living if you’re laughing.  Maybe this stems from my career in health care.  Humans are sensitive and easily broken creatures.  I’ve learned that if you can’t find the joy in a bleak situation you’ll drown in sadness.  

But there’s a serious side to my happy jester act, a truth that hides not so far under the surface.  Humor is my way of dealing with insecurity, a way to mock the darkness before it can swallow me.  My greatest fear is no one laughing, and then the joke’s on me.

But when someone finds me amusing, has their outlook brightened for even a moment by something I did or said?

Affirmation.  Absolution.  Acceptance.  I banish the sober face of doubt for another day.

Humor is my insecurity blanket.  So please, laugh with me.  I want to bring you a smile, hell, I’ll even settle for a exasperated eyeroll.  I’m easy like that.

  “I’m not funny.  What I am is brave.”  --Lucille Ball.

Flash Fiction--The Man of My Dreams

LYRIC O' THE DAY:

I remember searching for the perfect words

I was hoping you might change your mind

--Riding on the Metro, Berlin

Excitement abounds!!  Today marks the first challenge in Rachael Harrie's Platform Building Campaign.  The rules were to do a piece of flash fiction, exactly 200 words, starting with the prompt "the door swung open" and ending with "the door swung shut" if possible.  Having never written flash fiction before, this was great fun, and a hell of a lot harder than I thought it would be.  It seems I'm a wordy girl.  Anyway, here goes nothing:

The Man of My Dreams:

        The door swung open, expelling a stench so foul it made my stomach twist.

He filled the entire door frame.  Six feet of lean muscle, posture too elegant for a man of his profession.  Dark hair curled damp against his collar as he shook his head in disgust.

He thrust a cold metal object in my palm.  Sparks danced up my arm.

I held my breath, not from the smell, but to force my heart to slow its wild pace.  His eyes glowed an ethereal green as he watched me, waiting to finish the deal.

I owed payment for my follies.

We stood face to face in the foyer as he glanced at the tchotchkes lining the walls, but trinkets didn’t interest him.

“You better dunk that in bleach,” he growled in a sultry southern drawl I had come to crave.

I looked at the prize in my hand.  Diesel the Tank Engine grinned up at me, mocking my obsession.

He opened the front door, grasping the handle with his talented fingers.  A wry smile turned his lips.  “Please keep your son away from the toilet, ma’am.  Then I won’t have to keep coming back.”

And the door swung shut.

The Tooth Fairy: Mouse or Menace

LYRIC O’ THE DAY:

And the devil in the black dress watches over

My guardian angel walks away

Life is short and love is always over in the morning

Black wind come carry me far away

--Temple of Love, The Sisters of Mercy

Good morning!  I have been loving Rachel Harrie's Writer's Campaign.  I'm steadily visiting lots of new blogs and meeting so many talented folks.  If you've stopped by and I haven't followed you back, please let me know!  Now, on to Sunday's mythbusting.

Armed with a backpack that made him look like a giant turtle, my son reigned victorious over his first week of kindergarten.  He also returned with a valuable bit of information, thanks to a loose tooth and kindergarten lore.

“Mommy, the tooth fairy is going to bring me a lot of money for my tooth when it falls out.”

My boy looked a lot like this during his declaration.

Ah, the currency of calcium.  A child has 20 deciduous or “baby teeth” to lose between the ages of 6 and 12.  For most cultures, it’s a simple rite of passage.  To lessen the blow of leaving childhood, the idea of a benevolent spirit purchasing a freshly extracted tooth has become well accepted.  But before I started this post, I had no idea where this myth came from.  To my surprise, there was no dentist to blame.

Teeth have long been symbols of power, luck, and protection.  Teething rituals date back to ancient times with the earliest mentions of the tradition in the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, the most extensive written account of Norse poetry and mythology.  Viking folk were quite wary of witchcraft and demons, and believed that teeth offered a pearly protection.  If a child lost a tooth, their warrior parent would give them a “tooth fee” for it.  The Vikings often wore them as jewelry; a toothy talisman against demons.  This tradition is still practiced today by warriors of the celebrity sect, as shown by my favorite Rocky Horror sweetheart, Susan Sarandon.  Here she wears a bracelet made from her daughter's baby teeth.

I actually think this is kinda cool.  Photo from hollybaby.com

Native Americans often used teeth in their medicine bags, believing them to have powers in love and protection magic.  Gypsy lore suggests that parts of another human--like nail clippings, hair, or teeth--can be used in sympathetic magic.  This is similar to how voodoo dolls are used.  For that reason, they would destroy lost teeth in a fire, or in some cases, have an adult swallow them.  Yum!

I suspect that’s something Paula Deen will NOT be covering in butter anytime soon.

Some cultures buried lost teeth to help the child “grow a new one.”  In Asia and Africa, teeth were thrown on the roof for scavenger animals to retrieve.  Supposedly if a mouse or rat ate the tooth, that would ensure future sharp teeth for the child. 

Speaking of the order Rodentia, the Europeans seemed quite taken with tales of mice with tooth fetishes.  In Scotland, a white rat purchased lost teeth.  In Spain, “Ratoncito Perez," aka Perez the little mouse, promised money for each lost tooth.  Italy, Germany, and the Czechs all had their own version of the tooth mouse.  Not to be outdone, the Finnish went so far as to create a “tooth troll,” a vile creature named Hammaspiekko that would drill holes in children's teeth if they ate too much candy.  

Now that’s something you don’t read in a Dr. Spock baby book.  Although this clip from Metalocalypse is enough to make me stop eating candy.  And serves as a reminder to let my kid know that teeth only grow back once.

At some point, the tooth mouse morphed into a fairy, and an 18th century story called La Bonne Petite Souris (The Good Little Mouse) may be the reason.  In this tale, a beautiful fairy disguised as a mouse saves a princess from an evil king by repeatedly biting him in the face, ultimately causing his death.  It’s probably much more poetic in French.  

The diabolical tooth mouse.

America helped the tooth fairy finally wax her whiskers and became a proper lady.  A three act play titled “The Tooth Fairy” came out in 1927, but the first published children’s story on the subject as we know it is believed to be by Lee Rogow in 1949.  Some folklorists think that once Rogow’s story established the legend, the media, post-war affluence, and a more child-centered mindset in American families allowed the Tooth Fairy to take her place with Santa, The Easter Bunny and The Great Pumpkin.  

What pre teen boys hope the tooth fairy looks like.  Drawing by 14-bis on deviantArt from google

What the tooth fairy actually looks like.  Drawing by wolfgangmustdie on deviantArt from google

Rosemary Wells, a professor at Northwestern University Dental School, was a leading tooth fairy authority.  She had an extensive collection of tooth memorabilia showcased in The Tooth Fairy Museum in Deerfield, Illinois (now defunct).  Her research showed that the idea of a tooth fairy and treats in exchange for teeth was universally shared in most cultures as a way to soothe the transition from child to adult.  Simply, it was a way to get children to look forward to something normally unsettling.

  

The Tooth Fairy still shows up in popular media.  Take 2010‘s creatively named cinematic zenith, “The Tooth Fairy,” starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.  Didn’t see it?   I guess mouse to fairy to WWE warlord was a folkloric jump people were not willing to make.  Give it another 100 years. 

In literature, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series has a story line of tooth fairies who possibly originated from the bogeyman.  His fairies always carry pliers in case they can’t make change and need to extract an extra tooth to make it all even.  For horror lovers, Thomas Harris’s novel Red Dragon follows a cannibalistic serial killer nicknamed, “The Tooth Fairy.”

Tasty Teeth, a Hellboy story from Guillermo del Toro, tells how tribes of fairies would suck the marrow from children’s bones.  In 1226 Pope Honorius made a pact with the King of the Fairies to end the carnage--the fairies got children’s teeth in exchange for a silver coin.  According to the story, children stopped believing in the fairies, so they started their grisly marrow suckage again.  Grenades and explosions followed soon after.  Gotta love Hellboy.

The Tooth Fairy is a myth that most people can easily give up.  But my six year-old?

Anyone got a set of fairy wings I can borrow?