You Never Know What's in Sausage

The other day the girls and I were toodling around town, running various errands. After two or three stops, we decided we were thirsty and would stop for a drink. We dropped our purchases off at the car, and walked to a nearby Starbucks. (My idea. Hello, my name is Jennifer, and I'm a Starbucks-aholic.) Sabrina ordered a sausage and egg breakfast sandwich since she has become a hobbit and it was time for her second breakfast.

We decided to take our order to go and munched and sipped as we meandered back through the parking lot to our car. About halfway there, Sabrina says, "That's weird. There's a rock in my sandwich!" Supremely unconcerned, I told her that was highly unlikely. While one can never know exactly what unsavory ingredients are used to make sausage, generally speaking you can be fairly certain it doesn't include rocks.

Sabrina stopped for a moment and bent over, making a sort of wet sound. Showing vast amounts of motherly concern I asked, "Oh, my gosh. Did you just spit? Or were you vomiting? Either way, that's really disgusting. I hope nobody saw that." She informed me that yes, she had just spit. She didn't want to continue trying to chew that rock in her sausage. And wasn't it weird that the rock was kind of flesh-colored? Thinking this was a lot of drama for what was most likely a piece of gristle I told her no, it wasn't weird. And can we move on before we get a citation for public disturbance or littering or something?

We continued on our way, but about the time we got to car, Sabrina started chanting, "Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. OH, MY GOSH!" I couldn't ignore her, though I tried, and finally said, "What? What? WHAT?"

"You know that rock in my sausage?"

"Good grief, haven't we sort of exhausted that topic?"

"Mom, I think it was my tooth. LOOK!" And sure enough, a molar was missing.

Rose immediately turned around. I asked her where she was going, and she said we had to go back and look for Sabrina's tooth. Sabrina told her not to worry. The tooth fairy could handle a situation like this. But Rose was insistent, even though it wasn't her tooth that was lost. I told her we were absolutely not going back to crawl around under cars looking for Sabrina's tooth. There were far too many things that could go wrong with that plan, from ruining perfectly good clothes to the girls having to call 911 on my cell phone after I got run over or stuck halfway underneath a car.

Rose reluctantly gave in, and we all got in the car. At least it wasn't her tooth we had to leave behind. I was relieved because in addition to having narrowly avoided being a parking lot accident victim, I still had my coffee. And Sabrina was happy because she felt a good story to tell was more than enough compensation for her not having possession of her tooth.

Until . . . a few days later when the tooth fairy, the reformed dentist Milton J. Snookers, had still not made a visit. Sabrina casually dropped into conversation that good ol' Milton J. had not yet paid her for her lost tooth, but allowed that it was probably because he was having trouble finding it in the parking lot. She would give him an extra day to find it, with the implication that she might not be so reasonable in a day or so.

The next morning she woke up to find this sign posted in her room.



Here's what she wrote back.



And it wasn't until she tried to take Milton J.'s note down that she found this.