may is here; it's lush and beautiful, flowers popping and grasses going to seed if you but turn the other way. got to my son's school the other day and mulberries were popping everywhere especially out front by the parking lot. they were a little nervous about letting the kids just pick them, because kids were getting stained left and right and there were a lot of purple t-shirts. i myself took my kid out front and we both got the purple hand, ate a dozen and picked a dozen more, left the lunch box out there by the parking lot in the process. with my beautiful purple hand i came into work that morning, and the workers were coming down, office to office, having to get into the pipes that run the heating and cooling. well this required the moving of this big ornery cactus which was really having a great time growing back there by the corner where there's tons of light and it's nice and dry and warm and nobody bugs you. but moving this cactus messed up my purple hand. where it had been purple and sticky, now it had sharp tiny little cacti prickles in it. what a way to start my day. as usual i made pipe-cleaning black coffee and went on my way down the hall. the ten-year-old pointed out rightly that the tooth fairy had neglected to put anything under his pillow when he'd lost a tooth. we'd already teased him that the tooth fairy would be better off giving him apps than money anyway, since he's so into apps and doesn't have any use for money, you need a credit card for apps anyway although he can always con his mom into taking money for the use of her credit card to buy apps. what kinds of apps does he want? i have no idea. they may be doing some game as the ones i saw earlier were doing, but he already knows more about it than i do and i have a vague sense of unease as he goes off with friends to explore, online now, whereas i as a kid used to explore railroad tracks, old wooded patches, creekbeds, etc. the tooth fairy i think is a kind of reverse santa claus, people don't go to much trouble to truly convince anyone that she magically comes by and delivers crisp dollars, or quarters or dimes as it was in my youth, or apps, or whatever. and she forgets, not once, but sometimes several nights in a row, or the parents complain about inflation or simply roll the dollar into some other fund that's being transfered when one is ten. and they disparage her especially if she doesn't have the right change or the dollar bill is old and torn like it didn't come from magic. this is when you just about get to say it out loud directly. hey, you don't deserve a buck for losing a tooth anyway, everyone loses a tooth, there's nothing inherently good about a kid who lives to lose another tooth. it happens, it happens to everyone. i'm sure some kids are hauling in more than a buck, some probably don't even know who the tooth fairy is. that's kind of different from santa, because everyone knows that dude & counts up pretty carefully what they haul in from him. my son wasn't even so upset about the tooth fairy, he figured he'd haul it in sooner or later anyway. more later, it's gotten late, and only the dogs remain waiting for me to give up.