STRAIGHTNESS
“Mr. Sambridge possessed a remarkably good mouthful of natural teeth for someone his age, whether ritually maintained or expensively corrected I could not tell.
As someone who has spent hours of agony strapped down in Dr. Frankenstein’s chamber of dental horrors in Farrington Street, I could only respect—and hate—anyone who still possessed such a spotless set of choppers.” ”
Had,
In matters of sexuality and life/career path, straightness is irrelevant.
Teeth are a different story.
Straightness (at least in our family), comes at a price. Not just the dollar cost of braces, but the social and emotional price you pay during the years of having metal strapped to your teeth.
Your brother got a palate expander this week. His first step in what I’m sure will be a series of many orthodontic hells.
All I want to do right now is listen to him talk. With that green piece of plastic cemented to the roof of his mouth, he has a micro-lisp. It’s glorious.
The most amazing thing to me is that he doesn’t seem to mind the whole thing. He brushes his teeth after lunch at school and lets your mom crank it with this little key without much fuss.
I admire this mostly because I can’t relate.
I had a palate expander, a couple rounds of braces, rubber bands, and retainers. I hated them all.
I experience braces as torture. After tightenings, I would cry. Not because of pain but because everything felt uneven. One nob pressed harder against the inside of my lip than the next and I couldn't focus on anything else. And then, just when I’d gotten used to the new position of my teeth and those sharp, clunky brackets, the orthodontist would go and change something and the torture would start all over again.
The burden and brutal inconvenience is real. The end result is worth maintaining.
Heres something very important to remember:
Wear your retainers.
After almost a decade post-braces, I assumed I was in the clear and stopped wearing my nighttime retainers for a few years. Slowly but surely, my teeth shifted. Not a crazy shift but enough that it drove me crazy. Which forced me back to an orthodontist at age twenty-three (because my own desire for dental perfection was greater than my hatred for appliances).
Do not make this mistake.
The upside of retainer wearing is that it serves as a gut check on intimacy. If you’re sleeping with them with plastic in your mouth, its good.
I love you my little chicklet,
Aunt Liz
