How I Discovered the Tooth Fairy Wasn't Real

I had a really horrible dentist as a child. That's kind of beside the point, but he was horrible. As a child I really thought that there was a Tooth Fairy. When I would lose a tooth, my mother would instruct me to leave it under my pillow, and then in the morning I would be a quarter richer. It was magical, and I guess that's really how the Tooth Fairy is at her best: magical.

So I was maybe six or seven and I was at my dentist's office. My dentist was talking to me about my teeth. I forget what the subject was, but he was like, "Let me show you something" and he went over to a drawer in his office and came back to me with a tooth. He showed me the tooth and I asked, "Where did that tooth come from?"

"This is one of your teeth." He answered.

"Where did you get it?" I asked.

"From your parents. They give all your teeth to me when they come out."

People always talk about remembering where they were when they discovered that JFK had been shot or when they heard about the 9/11 attacks. It's been thirty some-odd years and I can still remember when I learned that the Tooth Fairy didn't exist. It was from my dentist. I was a little kid and one minute I thought the Tooth Fairy existed and the next I knew the truth.

It's kind of funny and kind of sad.

How did you learn the Tooth Fairy didn't exist?