I hope you don’t find the box in my closet. I hope no one finds it because if they do, they’ll probably think I’m a serial killer.
There’s always a scene in the thriller when the protagonist discovers the serial killer’s lair and inside the fridge or inside the chest is a jar or a box filled with trophies from the killer’s victims. And as the reader or watcher we’re like, “Don’t look in the box! Don’t do it!” But we really want to know what’s inside. I’ll never forget a novel I read where the killer kept a stash of all his victims’ faces. He sliced those babies right off people’s sculls and kept them in his evil refrigerator.
I’ve never killed anybody but I do have a box of body parts stashed in my closet that would give you nightmares if you looked. Mixed in with all the other shoeboxes is a box filled with human teeth.
My daughter likes to borrow my shoes and every time she goes into the closet I think to myself, “Don’t open the wrong box! Because there’s no coming back from that.”
When I first started saving my kids’ teeth it really didn’t seem that creepy. I was the Tooth Fairy after all, and that chick is adorable. I flittered and floated into their rooms at night after they were sleeping and plucked each tooth from underneath their pillows, replacing it with a dollar because the Tooth Fairy has not adjusted for inflation since I was a kid.
I looked at the little tooth with its bloody stump where it was ripped out of my kid’s gummy smile and couldn’t bear to throw it away. It’s a part of my baby. I should save it.
Recently my mother presented me with my own bag of horror. All my baby teeth wrapped in calico and lace. What am I supposed to do with this? I can’t throw it away. Let’s hope I never lose a kidney because the storage on one of those is a bit of a hassle. READ MORE
