Oh, yeah. That's right. We're talking about my dental history.
It all began with a young girl with no teeth. Well! They just took their jolly sweet time coming in, and made the girl's parents worry that she would never develop teeth and they would have the first child with no chompers. But they came! And like the genesis of any superhero, that freakish occurrence gave her superhuman strength... in her teeth!
To this day she has never had a cavity! And at one dental examination, she was personally congratulated by the DENTIST HIMSELF on having such lovely teeth. He remarked, "I can tell your parents don't let you drink sodas!' Little did he know! Haha! The midschool-aged girl actually lived on Snickers and Mountain Dew for lunch.
But you see! We have our heroine, but what of our nemesis?
May I introduce... DR. SCOTT of Pueblo! Our heroine's orthodontist.
So we all know that our heroine's teeth were very healthy, but they were also very crooked and before braces had to wear a method of torture known as... a Herbst device. A deadly appliance that, over time, move's one's bottom jaw forward. I'm not making this up!
Right, so our nemesis simply MUST have a minion, right? Well his was his secretary, who checked patients in at the office. MAY GOD BE WITH YOU if you are dumb enough to walk into an orthodontist's office chewing gum with braces. She went nuts! Luckily, it never happened to our heroine... okay fine! Yes, the heroine was me. And I just saw other people suffer. It's kinda like "howlers" in Harry Potter.
While I never chewed gum around her, I had a scary moment with her once- in a moment of brilliance on my part, I went to a movie and ate Starbursts. Well, one of my brackets broke off! So I had to go have it reglued. My best excuse?
"I'm so sorry, I guess I was brushing too hard."
BULLSHIT ALERT! BULLSHIT ALERT!
But she didn't actually yell at me. Phew!
One of the longest days of my life was the day that they removed my herbst device, pulled several back teeth and put on braces. That day would have been hellish anyway but it turns out when they applied the herbst device way back when, they experimented on me with a new dental glue. A bright, blue, dental adhesive that WOULD NOT COME OFF! They had to chip away at it for hours. I swear, sometimes at dental checkups, the STILL find bits of blue glue.
My time with braces blurs together in my mind in a storm of pain and awkwardness and HOPE. For months I fantasized about having this movie star grin, all straight and white and lovely. Well, I can say this for my teeth... they are absolutely, wonderfully ordinary.
AND SO!!! I, the heroine, beat the conniving teeth-straightener and his scary minion. I beat crooked teeth. And now I can eat sticky candy and gum without feeling guilty.
But in the scene that happens when all the credits are shown, there is a shot of Dr. Scott laughing maniaclly becuase our heroine has lost her RETAINER.
The last bit of orthodontia I'd like to share is when they removed my wisdom teeth. The creeps were coming in sideways! (The teeth, not the dentists) So they knocked me out, dug the teeth out, and when I woke up, I was jumpy. Like, really jumpy. Like, "fall out of the dental chair, run down the hall and trip your way through the lobby while you are chased" jumpy. I still don't know why.
Well, here's to tomorrow! May it be a better day, and may my readers tell me YOUR tooth stories.
Sarah
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