NAPERVILLE, IL — A Naperville father made a significant discovery Saturday morning while searching for a Phillips-head screwdriver, locating a sealed Ziploc bag containing fourteen baby teeth he had personally collected from beneath pillows between 2009 and 2020, confirming suspicions he had apparently never fully processed.

Gary Hendricks, 47, stood at the open junk drawer for approximately four minutes before calling his wife, Diane, 45, into the kitchen to verify what he was looking at. Diane confirmed the teeth belonged to their three children and noted she had known about the bag since 2012.

“I knew the Tooth Fairy wasn’t real,” Gary said. “I just hadn’t connected that to the part where I was the one doing it. Those are two separate realizations, apparently.”

“He stood there holding the bag like it was evidence at a trial he didn’t know he was a witness in.” — Diane Hendricks, 45

The bag was stored behind a dead 9-volt battery, a 2019 Jiffy Lube receipt, and a novelty bottle opener from a company that no longer exists. Gary noted that he had no memory of placing the bag in the drawer, which Diane described as “exactly how all fourteen tooth pickups went.”

Their youngest child, Mara, 14, was informed of the discovery and asked if she could have the bag. Gary said no without explanation.

At press time, Gary had located a second envelope in the same drawer labeled “TEETH – MARA FIRST ONE” in his own handwriting, suggesting the filing system had been more organized at the start.