Mice, and wings, and coins, and things

Why are we so attached to the Tooth Fairy/Raton Perez tooth myth? I mean, why teeth? That being said, I’d rather explain why I’ve come to babble about teeth, the reason being that I was brushing my teeth when I came home, as I couldn’t after lunch, and just realized that as a child, a huge part of me was hinged on my next wiggly tooth and the nice mouse coming for it. I remember I had a book about the Raton Perez sneaking all the way into a hospital to collect a boy’s tooth and leave him his coin. I don’t think the appeal is based on the money, but rather on the tooth itself, because it’s such a big part of a child’s life. The teeth that were so painful to grow in babyhood have begun to give way to the permanent adult teeth, signifying growing up. The child is also feeling every ache and pain, and the feeling of loss. Of losing a previously “permanent” fixture and kind of ease in to the discomfort of puberty, which will come soon after the end of the tooth loss or towards the end. So I believe it’s a cultural ritual to celebrate a child’s first move into adulthood, one we don’t really recognize. I’d like to find out more about it, to see the roots of giving coins for teeth in antiquity. Coins are of course another way of recognizing that a child is growing, as the child will now recognize the value of money, and a more adult reward. My next question is why we choose the Tooth Fairy or El Raton Perez as the tooth collecting figures. Why would we choose a mouse? Aren’t mice and rats and rodents in general despised as filthy dangerous creatures? I mean if you take a step back you realize that as a child you may have idolized a sewer dwelling mouse that takes teeth in exchange for money? I remember also being told that the teeth would be used to make the Mouse Queen’s palace. A little spooky if you think about it. Still though, haven’t bracelets and things been made of teeth in the past? Maybe it was a return to our indigenous origins, or the Spanish myths about them. The queen bit definitely betrays our former status as a colony under a foreign sovereign. The mouse might be us, despised by other powers acting upon us. The next analysis befalls the Tooth Fairy. Fairies have always been beloved creatures, the good ones any way, and since the fairy is mostly a north American figure (also Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and much of the UK) the children would’ve grown up on varied media featuring fairies. The fairy is mostly said to be a beautiful feminine winged humanoid which gifts the children with money of some kind in exchange for their tooth, but I’m fuzzy as to the details into why she wants teeth. Maybe she doesn’t and it’s all about kindness and goodwill, which would also serve as a teaching to the kids.