Rani’s grandmother had made paayasam to celebrate her fallen tooth on Monday morning. As she walked into her classroom, IV B, she saw that Manoj had lost another front tooth.
"I sowed it carefully in my garden and watered it all weekend," he explained. He now awaits a nice pearly set of teeth to grow.
As she listened to the two in conversation, Jaya was attempting to write a little note to a squirrel tooth god about her freshly fallen tooth. She had washed, dried, and preserved hers with a coat of transparent nail polish.
Myths, tales, and practices about deciduous or temporary teeth have been around foraeonsin many cultures. In Spanish culture tooth mice are believed to leave behind gifts in place of fallen teeth placed under pillows. In English children’s bedrooms, tooth fairies do this task. In El Salvador it's rabbits and in Sri Lanka squirrels are the gift-givers.
In Iran, children throw their fallen teeth up in the air requesting Allah for new teeth. Japanese kids throw the upper teeth up and the lower teeth into pits underground.
Mothers in Brazil are known to take a careful look at their children’s primary teeth to identify deficienciesand prospective illnesses. Recent research shows that stem cells collected from primary teeth are known to be valuable in any bodily repair that one might need at any point in life.s
What did you do with your fallen teeth?
