Defending the Tooth Fairy
Read Mercer Schuchardt
July 1, 2000
"Whenever I start to write, I seem to think of nothing but sadness."-M. F. K. Fisher, Bern Journal, 1938 We do that which we do not want to do. And we don't do that which we want to do. And then sometimes, we do things that don't fit the neat formulas of St. Paul. I spent my mythologically formative years on the Dutch side of the island of St. Maarten, where the climate and the native wildlife never allowed us to be taken in by Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. The North Pole was a long way from the Caribbean, and an old man in a red fur suit bringing gifts in December-the high season for tourists to come skinny-dipping on our beaches-was just patently absurd. Likewise, the Easter Bunny didn't stand a chance on St. Maarten, where, if there ever had been any real rabbits, they were long since devoured by snakes, or by the mongeese imported to solve the snake problem. Things were very simple. Fairy tales were fairy tales, and snakes got eaten by mongooses. In truth, I still don't know how to say the plural of mongoose, so I'm just covering all the angles here. Despite this separation of reality and fantasy that island life imposed, I do remember one particular Christmas when Santa Claus, complete with fur suit and bag of tricks, came to the beach via submarine and huffed and puffed his way along the whole length of the beach, saying Ho! Ho! Ho! until he experienced heat exhaustion or myocardial infarction. I remember laughing at him for looking so silly, though in the picture it looks like we're glad that he's there. He is sweating profusely. I also remember a particularly wonderful Easter Sunday when, despite the fact that we were unchurched pagans, my father (who had been divorced from my mother since just after I was born) ...
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