A/N A quick little vignette written while I was supposed to be studying for a statistics midterm. I actually ended up doing really well on the test - maybe I can thank this short tale for providing me with a beneficial reprieve!
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"Lizzy, why aren't you eating your spaghetti? You love spaghetti."
The little girl in question didn't answer; she was too busy pushing the pasta around on her bunny plate.
"What? I can cook as good as Newkirk," said Hogan, trying to get a response from his little daughter.
Silence.
"Is it because he had to work late today? He'll be back in an hour, Lizzy."
Silence.
"You know, he'd want you to eat something...do you want something else?"
Silence.
"Lizzy, are you okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine," said Lizzy, twirling some spaghetti around her soft plastic fork. She put it in her mouth and chewed very, very slowly.
He watched as she ate a couple bites like this. He wasn't that bad of a spaghetti-maker, was he?
All of a sudden, he heard a very subtle crunch sound come from Lizzy's direction. He looked over to witness the most terrified expression he'd ever seen cross her face. She dropped her fork and bolted away from the table.
He was up and after her in a split second, but she was somehow quicker than him. Maybe he was getting old.
She ran up the stairs to her room and closed the door, Hogan a few seconds behind her.
"Lizzy, what wrong?" he asked through the door. He didn't get an answer, so he tried opening the door without waiting for a response.
Lizzy was sitting on her bed, her hands covering her mouth.
"Lizzy, what happened?" he ventured to ask again, sitting down next to her on the bed.
He heard her mumble something, but it was completely unintelligible with her hand positioned over her mouth.
"I can't hear you with your hand in front of your mouth," he said, gently reaching up to coax her hand away.
To his alarm, there was blood on her hand and welling up in her mouth.
"I broke myself," he heard her mumble, and then he noticed something. In her hand was a tiny, blood-stained tooth.
"Lizzy, you didn't tell me you had a loose tooth," he said, relieved that it hadn't been anything too serious, but also wondering why things like this always happened when Newkirk wasn't home.
The little girl just sniffled, so he picked her up and carried her to the bathroom where he had her rinse out her mouth and clean off the little tooth.
"I didn't know teeth came out," Lizzy remarked later, looking in the mirror and admiring the small gap she now had in her smile.
"Yup. They're all gonna do it. Though not at once," Hogan told her, handing her the tiny pearl of the tooth that had come out earlier.
She looked at the small object for a few moments before looking back up at him. "What do I do with it?"
"Whatever you want. You know, you could put it under your pillow."
"Why would I want to do that?" she asked, looking at him like he had lost his mind.
"Well, if you put it under your pillow, the tooth fairy comes flying by in her B-17 and leaves you money," explained Hogan.
"Is it the same B-17 that babies come from?" the little girl asked.
"...Yeah, it is," said Hogan, cursing himself for forgetting that he had given her a similar answer when she had asked the one question all parents dread. "It has a lot of functions, the B-17."
"Wow. You know everything, dad."
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It turned out that he wasn't the only one who had been teaching her things.
Later on in the afternoon, after Lizzy had calmed down from the excitement of losing her first tooth, she had cajoled him into playing one of her games.
Today she wanted to play Old Maid. Hogan really didn't consider that a very challenging game, and not one that really required any skill, but he managed to lose every time out of the five games they played.
"Let's play something else," he suggested, after losing five games of Old Maid and two of Go Fish.
"Okay," agreed Lizzy, putting her deck of cards away. Hogan thought it was cute that she used one that had bunnies and birds instead of clubs and spades.
The little girl appeared to contemplate what activity she wanted to engage in next for a few moments before speaking.
"I can show you a magic trick," she said.
"Yeah? What is it?"
They had both been sitting on the floor of her room while he had been losing at card games, so she scooted a little closer to him.
"Count how many buttons you have on your shirt while I touch each one," said Lizzy.
"Okay," said Hogan, wondering when this would make sense. After Lizzy had confirmed that there were ten buttons on his shirt, he ventured to ask what the point of this was.
He got his answer when she reached into her sleeve and presented him with...his wallet.