Every winter my house would grow large icicles from the roof. My mother explained that it was because our walls weren't very insulating. They were made of wood with several holes roughly patched, not the greatest for keeping warm overnight. Because of this, the snow on the roof melted down and froze into pointed icicles.

I always liked looking at the icicles, for they looked like giant teeth waiting to sink into human flesh. I used to terrorize my brother with stories of monsters that lived on the roof whose teeth grew every winter when it woke up hungry. 

When my brother grew too old to believe a monster stalked our house, I used to tell him that whenever the icicles broke it meant your teeth would fall out; the more icicles that broke, the more teeth you lost. 

Since my brother was of age to begin losing teeth he took this new tale very seriously. He used to watch the hanging ice every day in his free time, waiting to see when the next one would break. Should one have cracked and fallen to the ground he would immediately check his own teeth, making sure that none of them were missing.

One day I played a particularly mean joke on him. One of his molars was very loose and close to falling out, so he was watching intensely to see when the next icicle would fall. I asked one of my friends to climb up on the roof and break all of the icicles so that my brother would think that all his teeth would fall out at once.

I have to say, the look on my brother's face was priceless when he saw the shattered ice. He cried loudly that he didn't want to lose all his teeth, bawling for about an hour before he calmed down. Meanwhile, I got scolded by our parents for playing such a mean trick. What can I say? My brother was very gullible back then.