The other month, when the youngest of my sisters started talking about her new loose tooth, I realised how horribly long it's been since I've pulled someone's tooth out, and how sad this made me. Before you go "Ooookay..." and inch away singing "You'll Be A Dentist", hear me out.

Pulling out my siblings' teeth used to be the highlight of my day, literally. Somehow, they got to the stage where they were losing teeth left and right within about two weeks of each other. And, since at that point they still trusted me, it fell to me to make sure that their teeth fell out before they got loose enough that they started worrying about choking on them in their sleep.

Well, as is the way in the Haven House for Wayward Teens, things soon got out of hand. It got to the point that every night I would be asked to pull anywhere from one to, in one case, seven teeth. Only in our house would the rule "no tooth-pulling after bedtime" have to be made. My brother ended up looking like a hockey player for about a month, and the older of my two younger sisters was almost as bad.

The method was¹ this:

• Acquire one roll of paper towels² and a small, willing (stupid) child, loose tooth optional. Convince him or her that there is indeed a loose tooth in his/her mouth.

• If you're feeling creative, you can involve fun things like tweezers, shoelaces or wrenches. One of my particular favorites was always duct tape.

• Find a tooth you don't particularly like, doesn't matter which one, and clamp onto it with the paper towel. Instruct the child to smack you when it starts hurting.

• Pull. Stop after a bit³. Let the child breathe. Then pull again. Eventually the tooth'll come out, and the child can then approach the aforementioned parental unit and ask for money.

Then you charge 'em a 50% commission.