As every parent, teacher, or youth leader knows (or learns very quickly), every child at some point will say the most outlandish things. Sometimes I think they thrive on trying to get their parents to believe at least six outlandish things before breakfast. �I did brush my teeth. If my brush is dry, well, I must have used the wrong one.� �I wasn�t hitting my sister. I was swatting a mosquito on her. I was helping.� �I did all of the math problems but someone must have erased some of them as a joke.� Dealing with outlandish statements would be easier if they didn�t turn out to be true every once in a while, just to throw adults off.

Thursday night, after she was supposed to be in bed, Day-Hay came tapping on my bedroom door. �I can�t sleep,� she said. �My jaw hurts, I think because my wisdom teeth are coming in.� For a moment, I thought there were two possibilities: (1) her jaw really hurt but it was for some other reason or (2) her jaw didn�t hurt and she was playing let�s-stall-for-time. Then it occurred to me. This time could be that one in a thousand time when the outlandish was true.

If this statement had come from any other child, that slim possibility would never have occurred to me. But Day-Hay and teeth has always been a story of too many, too early. When Day-Hay was a month and a half old, I called the pediatrician�s office, described what I was seeing in her behavior, told the pediatrician that I could swear I was looking at teething, and then ask her if there was any possibility that Day-Hay could be teething. �Well,� she told me. �It�s almost not a possibility at all. I�d put it out of mind.� Two weeks later, Day-Hay had a tooth. By her three month checkup, she had two teeth all the way in. The pediatrician took one look and said, �I�m glad I hedged and said �almost.��

Day-Hay even lost teeth early. She was only four and a half when she lost her first tooth. She came home from junior kindergarten that day all excited. �I�m the first one in my class in the tooth book,� she recounted. �Except for Bobby and that doesn�t count because he fell off his bicycle.� Although she�s twelve, her twelve year old molars have been in for approximately three years.

Thinking back caused me to be cautious. �Hmmm,� I said. �Let me look.� I looked in her mouth but the light wasn�t good. I couldn�t see the back of her mouth. I rooted around in the nightstand drawer and got out the flashlight. I looked. I went and washed my hands and I felt just to confirm what I was seeing.

Yes, folks, my twelve year old has wisdom teeth coming in. My twelve year old is teething again, poor dear. I gave her an ibuprofen, tucked her in, and got into my own bed feeling quite good about myself. I even remember to warn Mr. Philately about this unlikely news just in case his scale for weighing outlandish statements was not working as well as mine on this one. I reflected on my close brush with being the dreaded Mom-Who-Didn�t-Believe-the-Truth.

But I couldn�t feel too relieved. I�m still a Mom. There will be other outlandish statements and a very few of them will be true too. I just hope my outlandishness scale works as well in all the tomorrows to come.

LAST YEAR: Balding

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Copyright 2006 by Ellen