“Before I tell the first story, I need to set some context, says Lucas. This story will tell you about how young Daniel’s experiences shaped his view of the world he lives in and how he reacts to it. It might not seem that important an event, but it is one of the many building blocks of his adult life.”

No one in his audience of four appears to have anything to say, so he begins his performance.

In 1955, six-year old Daniel is dreaming. Or at least he thinks he’s dreaming. He can hear someone trying to wake him up by saying “Psst, psst, psst,’ But there can’t be a stranger in his bedroom. There’s almost no space between his bed and those of his brothers. There is barely enough room for him to navigate his way to his lower bunk.  If a stranger were in the room, Daniel would see him. So, he must be dreaming.

‘Psst. Psst. Psst.’ The sound won’t go away even now that Daniel realizes he’s wide awake. He looks around the room. There is enough ambient light for him to tell his brothers are asleep in their beds and nobody is standing by his bed saying ‘psst, pst.’ But there is certainly someone making that noise. As he discovers, it is not someone, but something, making the psst sound. Daniel wants to just forget about the noise and go back to sleep.  In an attempt to do so, he turns over in his bed and faces the bedroom wall. This makes him comes nose-to-nose with a small, brown mouse. Before he can react, the mouse says “Hello Daniel.”

Daniel is gobsmacked into silence and immobility. Before he can recover from the shock of having a rodent speak to him, the mouse continues to talk. “Don’t be afraid. Nothing bad is going to happen. I’m just here to collect the tooth you put under your pillow tonight.”

‘Why do you want my tooth? What good is it to you?”

The mouse wriggles its nose before he answers. “I don’t want your tooth. I just came to collect it for someone else who does want it.”

“Well, I don’t want to give it to you. I’m not going to give my tooth to a mouse. I’m leaving it for the tooth fairy.”

“Why are you going to do that?” asks the mouse.

“Because the tooth fairy will take my tooth and leave me money.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because I have heard kids at school talking about it. They got money.”

The mouse pauses for a second to figure out just what it is going to say next. It does not want to engage in a full-blown discussion. “Has the tooth fairy ever left you money?” the mouse asks.

“This is the first tooth I’ve lost, “Daniel says as he reaches under his pillow to retrieve his tooth and show it to the mouse.

“Did any of your brothers leave their baby teeth under their pillows?”

“Yes.”

“Did they get any money?”

“No,” says Daniel who is forced to ask himself why he thinks the tooth fairy is actually going to come that night. There’s a good chance he only goes to rich peoples’ houses. Even at his young age, he knows not everybody has everything. His house has an ice box. Everyone else has a refrigerator. There’s no TV. He gets to lie on the floor and listen to the cathedral radio. There’s no car in their driveway. Their driveway is the only one on their street that has ashes instead of cement or asphalt.

The basement of Daniel’s house is home to a coal-burning furnace with octopus-arm huge ducts that carry warm air to the upper floor. Sometimes he slides open the grate on furnace and looks at the coals burning inside and thinks that must be what hell is like. The sump pump in one corner sings its song of flood protection nestled in a water-filled pit. Daniel often takes a look at it. Sometimes his older brother offers to throw him in. Their small house is chock-a-block with nine bodies. No wonder the tooth fairy doesn’t come to visit.

“So, here’s what I have to offer, says the mouse. You give me this tooth and all your other baby teeth as they fall out, and my master will give you something of great value in return.”

“What am I going to get and when?”

“I can’t tell you that because I don’t know,” says the mouse. But I can tell you my master says that they will be some things of importance that you will need at different times in your life and having them will make you very special. He also told me that you have to listen for his voice if you want the special things to come your way.”

“So will he come and visit me?” asks Daniel.  Will he be showing up with the things that will make me special?”

“I don’t know,” answers the tooth mouse. All he told me was that you should listen for his voice. He didn’t say if that meant he would show up in person. But I don’t know why he would tell you to listen if he was going to stand in front of you talking.”

Daniel likes the idea of being special, so he holds out the tooth. The talking mouse picks it up in his mouth and disappears. Daniel has a lot of questions he wants to ask, but it is too late for that. Though he is full of questions, they are not enough to keep him awake, and he is soon in a deep sleep.

When Daniel awakens, his first thought is about the dream he had about a talking mouse. He puts his hand under his pillow in search of the money left by the tooth fairy. Not only is there no money, there’s no tooth either. There is a small number of possibilities for what has created this situation. One is that the tooth fairy came, took his tooth, and didn’t leave any money. Another possibility is that his parents came into his room and took his tooth. It could also be that one of his brothers took it. Daniel knows that it is unlikely any of those possibilities are responsible for his missing tooth. That leaves him with only one possible answer. The talking mouse took it.

The only thing Daniel is absolutely sure of is that he is never going to tell anyone what he has experienced. If he starts telling people that he has met a mouse that can talk, he is likely to end up taking a bus to a special school the way Jimmy his next door neighbour does. Jimmy can’t speak and makes guttural noises while flapping his hands. No one is ever going to hear about the tooth mouse.

As he is lying in bed thinking about what has happened, his tongue is unconsciously exploring his mouth. He runs his tongue over his upper and lower teeth. He finds an unstable one. By pushing on it with his tongue, he can rock it back and forth. This is going to be the next baby tooth to go. What should he do with it? Being missed by the tooth fairy could have been a mistake. Next time it might work. He figures he has nothing to lose and will put the next one under his pillow. This happens sooner than he expects.

That night, Daniel has another tooth to deposit. The same is true for the next night, the next night and several nights after that. Each morning after a tooth loss, Daniel checks under his pillow. Nothing. Always nothing. He begins to ask himself if he should bother. He decides he will bother. If the mouse was telling the truth, and if Daniel keeps his word, then something really good is going to happen to him.

After his initial dental losses, the time between individual tooth loss has grown longer. Some of Daniel’s baby teeth are quite obstinate and have decided to stay in place even though his adult teeth are trying to push them out. By the time Daniel is 12, all his baby teeth are gone. Except for one. It’s causing a problem for his upper row of teeth. He has tried his best to get it out, but nothing has worked. The next step is to go see Dr. Yasney the dentist. Daniel has never been to a dentist. None of his brothers have been to a dentist, but from what Daniel can tell from what he sees on television, going to the dentist is not a pleasant experience. He makes it clear to his mother that he really doesn’t want to go.

In spite of his protestations, Daniel finds himself in Dr. Yasney’s chair. “It’s a good thing you brought him in,” says Dr. Yasney to Daniel’s mother. “It’s going to be a bit awkward to extract. Do you want me to freeze it?” Daniel’s mother shakes her head. Freezing will cost extra. There’s not enough in her meagre budget for an extra expense. “I’m sure he will be ok without it,” she says and gives Daniel a look that says don’t make a big deal out of this. No crying.

Daniel does his best to comply, but ends up whimpering while Dr. Yasney removes the tooth and places it in a tray attached to the dental chair. Daniel glances over at it and asks “Can I, have it?” Dr. Yasney looks at Daniel for a second and wonders why a 12-year old would want a tooth. He cannot possibly believe in the tooth fairy. “Sure” says Dr. Yasney as he picks up the small tooth and hands it to Daniel.

Daniel’s Mother has the same question as the dentist. Why on earth would her far-too-old son want one of his baby teeth? She has wondered about her son for some time. She has always found him a bit strange. He started reading the newspaper at six and has wanted to discuss world issues with her since then. He also commandeers the adult books she is reading such as The Agony and the Ecstasy rather than the much more appropriate stories of The Hardy Boys. He has also read his older brother’s English literature books and wants to discuss the novel 1984. His mother has never read the book. And now his desire for a baby tooth reinforces her opinion of his strangeness. She is curious about why Daniel wants the tooth, but decides she has had enough of thinking about her son’s strangeness, and decides not to ask for fear she is going to learn something even stranger about her son.

That night for the last time, Daniel puts a tooth under his pillow even though he feels a bit silly doing something only little kids do. The next morning there is nothing there. But he has a feeling that something happened during the night. He has a vague memory of something shimmering and silvery flying around his room. After a while he decides it must have been a dream and there was nothing in his room that night. He does not know what to think about the feather he found of the floor next to his bed and decides it must have come from his pillow.

Some weeks later, his school is abuzz about a new program. Baby teeth are being collected so they can be tested for the amount of radiation they contain. It is a way of determining how much radiation from above-ground testing of atom bombs is making its way into everyone’s body. Each kid who donates a tooth gets a metal button that reads “I gave my tooth to science.”

Daniel’s school is filled with kids wearing the tooth button. There are several who are Daniel’s age. Everyone wants to know why he isn’t wearing a button. Daniel’s response is to tell them that he lost all his baby teeth early on and didn’t have any to donate. This explanation seems to work and Daniel is glad he doesn’t have to wear a button that says, “I gave my teeth to a tooth mouse.”

“So, there you have it,” says Lucas.”

“Really?” says Lord Hades. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I think this is not much of a story.”

“This is just the beginning,” says Lucas. “I think it will make sense in the full story of this man’s life.”

Hades directs a question to his judges. “What do the three of you think?”

Minos is the first to respond. “Well, I certainly don’t have enough to decide on the nature of this man one way or the other. But I do think it is a rather boring story. There’s no murders, no incest or bestiality.

“I have to agree.” Says Rad. “There is certainly not enough for me to judge whether he lived justly.”

Hades turn to Aecus for his response. “I too have very little to go on, and I cannot judge his virtue.”

“I think that is pretty good analysis,” says Hades. “I suggest that we just stop this exercise and send this fellow back to the above world.”

“Easier said than done,” says Lucas. “Remember what happened with Eurydice. We didn’t do too well with that.”

“Apples and oranges,” says Hades. “That wasn’t our fault. It was Orpheus’s. All he had to do was not look back and Eurydice would be able to get to the above world. We could just send this Daniel Lehman fellow back without no strings attached. We can do whatever we like, we are gods. Not snivelling mortals.”

Lucas takes the opportunity to make his case. “When I talked to Hermes about Daniel’s story. He only agreed to provide me with it if I promised that I would tell his whole story. That’s the only reason he provided us with all the details necessary to pass judgement on Daniel’s life.”

Hades is annoyed. “And what makes Hermes think he can stop us from doing or not doing whatever we like?”

“Lord Hades, only Orpheus has ever gone back to the above world. And it is worth remembering that he only got here without dying because the gods protected him. One of those powerful gods was Hermes, and without him, Daniel is neither going forward nor backward. Hermes has made it clear to me that either I tell the whole story or you will have to listen to Daniel calling out to them for eternity. He snaps his fingers and Daniel’s voice fills their space. It seems loud enough to wake the dead.

He snaps his fingers again and Daniel’s moaning stops. Hades and his three judges sigh in unison. Lucas takes this as a sign of resignation. “Since we do not really have a choice, I suggest we continue with Daniel’s story and answer the question it poses. So, using the scale I gave you, do you think the story I just told is of importance as to understanding how and why Daniel chooses to live his life?”

“Mice, teeth, a fairy, and something called a bomb, how are they going to shape his future life?” Hades mumbles to himself.

“For this to work, you will all have to keep your comments to yourselves. It is important that you are not influenced by each other’s reactions,” says Lucas. Shall we get on with it?”

Strongly Agree	Agree	Neutral	Disagree	Strongly Disagree