After our conversation about long-forgotten items left in books, a volunteer at the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock, Vermont, writes to say that he found an old letter to the Tooth Fairy tucked inside a donated book. The letter is from July 1996, and the volunteer hopes to reunite the writer with that note. Carter, are you out there? And did you get the prize you were hoping for? This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Carter’s Lost Note to the Tooth Fairy”
You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it.
I’m Grant Barrett.
And I’m Martha Barnette.
In an earlier episode, we talked about items found in old library books, like somebody stuck a four-leaf clover in there and forgot about it, or an old receipt.
And after that, we heard from Mac McClelland. He’s a volunteer at the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock, Vermont, evaluating donated books for fundraising sales.
And Mac emailed us a photo of his all-time favorite find. And it’s a brief note on a sheet of binder paper. And it reads, “Dear Tooth Fairy, I lost two teeth by accident. And I was wondering if I still get a prize from Carter.”
And Grant, you’ve seen this. It’s the most adorable little note, with all that little kid handwriting and all those little kid misspellings.
Yes. That just breaks the heart. Does he get a prize?
And, of course, it took a while to decipher it because he spelled Tooth Fairy T-U-S-E-F-A-R-R-Y. And prize was P-R-I-S. And it’s painstakingly written in pencil.
But, you know, what’s really sweet is that at the top in ink, somebody wrote in the date. So you can just imagine somebody in Carter’s family found this adorable note, scribbled the date on it, stuck it in a book, but then forgot about it.
And Mack, the volunteer who found it, said he’d love to return it to Carter’s family as a keepsake. What’s the date on it? It’s 1996, so Carter’s probably a young adult right now, maybe in mid-30s.
So if there’s a Carter out there who grew up near Woodstock, Vermont, the library has something for you. And we also want to know if you got anything for those two teeth. Did you get your prize? Did the tooth fairy come through?
We love seeing adorable things from kids. What was the adorable thing that the kids in your life wrote? What was the thing that really must be shared?
Send it to us in email, words@waywordradio.org, or share it to us on Instagram. Our Instagram is at waywordradio.
