My 6-year-old Jack has a loose tooth. It is the granddaddy of all loose teeth.

What happened was, the first of his two front teeth fell out. That was last weekend. Apparently, the new vacancy gave his other front loose tooth space to wander. And wander it has. In the past few days, the tooth has dropped down more, slid right at a 45-degree angle and eased out against his upper lip.

The result: When he smiles, Jack looks like a 97-year-old backwoods moonshiner.

His friends love it. His mother can barely look at it. His desk neighbor in first-grade squealed in shock, then announced that his mouth looks like it belongs to a jackolantern (perfect analogy!). He’s having quite a lot of fun with it and makes a variety of truly funny faces, including a goofy Mona Lisa smile in which the loose tooth is the only one you see.

Every time Jack loses a baby tooth, the Tooth Fairy reaches under his pillow in the middle of the night, leaves a coin and puts the tooth with the others — in a secure, far-out-of-reach container. Sometimes I pick up that container and jiggle the teeth, marveling at how tiny they are, and at how big my first baby boy has become. Looking at them, I can almost smell the baby powder, hear the “gaga’s” and feel the baby fat that is long gone.

Call me crazy, but I’ll be just a little sad to see this latest tooth go.