The Shark Tooth Hunt

Fossils are my eight-year-old's entire personality. He has a whole shelf in his bedroom devoted to them, labeled in his own careful handwriting. So for his birthday, we drove to a creek bed in South Carolina famous for fossilized shark teeth.

We sifted gravel for six hours. We were sunburned, muddy and covered in bug bites. He didn't complain once. Every time he found a tooth, even a tiny one, he held it up to the light and announced its species like a professor.

Late in the afternoon, my screen came up with something heavy. It was a black, triangular shark tooth as big as my palm, serrated on the edges. A megalodon tooth, from a shark that lived three million years ago.

My son stared at it in silence. Then he looked at me with the most serious face I've ever seen and said, "Dad, this is the best day of my life." He sleeps with it on his nightstand. I'm told I'm allowed to visit.