The Little Bang Theory

There are times in every child’s life to try to find order and make sense of the universe. I found that many of my questions received confusing answers that only led to many more questions.  When I asked my mother where I came from, she said I started as something smaller than a bread crumb.  I, of course, made no distinction between something smaller than a bread crumb and an actual bread crumb, so it was hard to look at bread crumbs the same way after that.

It’s anyone’s guess how many lives were snuffed out when Mom wiped off the table. 
    At the first funeral I attended, hearing “Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return” immediately gave clarity to the dust under my bed.  It was dead people.  How it got there was another problem that eluded explanation.  Liz never had dust under her bed because it was where she chose to hide when faced with adversity, like when Dad brought home flu shots for the whole family.

When she saw the hypodermic needles boiling on the stove, she would scramble under the bed and secure a death grip on the far bed frame leg.  Mom and Dad never had any luck coaxing her out. When Dad would try to slide her out, she and the bed would move along the floor in unison.

I would sit nearby on my bed and enjoy being  a spectator, occasionally crawling under Liz’s bed to see how she was doing or to shuttle messages between them.

Not wishing to escalate the situation, Dad would wait her out in front of the TV set.  To her credit, Liz had amazing perseverance and resourcefulness, and just as a matter of “best practices,” kept a tin of cookies under her bed. While these incidences never ended well for Liz, she learned to take victory from her success in delaying the inevitable.
    My early understanding of the universe acknowledged a scientific side and a mystical side.  My interests were naturally drawn to the scientific side. The scientific side included things that were defined and predictable.  The mystical side included things that were not.

Among those dependable things I included on the scientific side were Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. While the great scientific minds seemed intimidated by these  three curiosities, there were few things as dependable. I noted with frustration that the older one got, the less they seemed to care bout the scientific dynamics of Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. 
    Unlike Santa Claus, who constantly judged children morally, the Tooth Fairy was all business. You had to be good for Santa Claus, but the Tooth Fairy only needed a tooth, and I knew of children with moral turpitude that benefitted greatly from that distinction.

Still, I couldn’t help but wonder what she did with all of those teeth.

    While I had never seen her, I felt sure that she looked like Tinkerbell, but that was because Tinkerbell was the only fairy I was familiar with. I had always assumed that Tinkerbell had started out as a Tooth Fairy before getting a break into show business.

I came to realize that there were many Tooth Fairies and that they were, obviously, assigned territories.  I knew this because the kids next door got a quarter, and we only got 15 cents.  The kids across the street got even less, 10 cents a tooth.
     Our tooth fairy had a more casual work ethic, as it often took a couple of nights after losing a tooth before she would stop by.  The week the exterminator came, she didn’t show up at all.  I waited faithfully, fearing the worst.  Either she expired or had become ill for a few days.  If she had been poisoned, they were pretty organized about getting someone new on the job.  After the mishap with the exterminator, I made sure that our cat stayed inside when the Easter Bunny was in town.
    Three important nature shows commenced in my early childhood.  National Geographic, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins and his assistant Jim.  It was always my hope that these programs  would do a better job of tackling topics that were of particular interest to children, like the Tooth Fairy or Easter Bunny. 
    The fact that neither of those creatures were native to the oceans or Lake Titicaca, as far as we knew, did give Jacques Cousteau a pass, but his son Philippe was so good at making friends with the sea creatures, I think he would have liked to know the Tooth Fairy.  Jacques was always saying things like, “In juz a few short minettes, Philippe haz become life lhong frenz wit da sea turtell. He names her Breeget because she haz beautiful eyes.”

You could tell that National Geographic had their own agenda, but Wild Kingdom could have come through. 
    Zoologist Marlin Perkins liked to shoot the object of his attention with a tranquilizer dart and then have his assistant Jim tiptoe in and put a big gaudy collar with a huge antennae and big helium balloon on the animal so that they could track the animal until the battery ran out.  That had to be a little awkward for the animal, returning to the herd with a hangover and a huge set of new accessories it had no recollection of acquiring.  Did Marlin really think the other animals would not notice?  Marlin and Jim always wore safari clothes, complete with pith helmets, regardless if they were hunting lions in Africa or the great polar bear on the North Pole.
    There were two striking things I noticed about  Marlin.  One was that he did not like to get his hands dirty, and the other was that he didn’t like to risk his life.  Apparently Jim liked to do both.  I thought hunting the Tooth Fairy would be a great episode that would minimize the danger to Jim.  The Tooth Fairy would be much easier to manhandle than the rhinos and bears that Marlin normally arranged for Jim, and the only real challenge would be “live” trapping, or determining the appropriate  dose on the fairy dart to shoot her down.
 

The whole episode lent itself to action, adventure, and time-lapse photography, and I would have
gladly offered up Liz’s and my bedroom for the hunt. Sadly, Marlin also lacked the requisite curiosity, so the episode remained unshot, and Mutual of Omaha lost a huge ratings opportunity.   
    That was just the tip of the iceberg....who wouldn’t want to learn more about  the Easter Bunny?  If anyone could find out, it would be Marlin and Jim.

They would find out where he got all those eggs, and how  he hauled so many with so little breakage?  Did the chickens offer them, or did he trick them?  Did the eggs come dyed, or did he do it?  Was there just one, like Santa Claus, who covered the whole world,  or was there a network, like the Tooth Fairies?  Even Santa had elves and the Mrs. to help him.  I asked my father if he had ever treated the Easter Bunny, and he said, no, he did not know him. 
    Santa Claus was merit based; the Tooth Fairy was materialistic, with her need for teeth; the Easter Bunny rewarded hunting skills.  Both of my parents had lost their natural curiosity about these three scientific creatures and were of no help in understanding them.  Were we really to believe that the Easter Bunny worked alone? 
    Without the help of the scientific community, I became resigned to the fact that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy would remain inscrutable curiosities.

Clean-up Editor: Toni Gardner, Author of  "My Fathers" and "Walking Where the Dog Walks"