Teeth: A Painful Reminisce

I cringed, shrinking back in my seat from the glare of the bright, fluorescent light shining directly into my face. My orthodontist leaned over me, clutching in his clean, white gloved hands a small mirror and another lethal looking metal instrument. He poked around in my mouth for a while, made markings with a wax pencil, and measured different aspects of my teeth. After 5 minutes of what I considered to be a violation of every part of my teeth he could reach, he leaned back and said to my mom, “ Yup. I’d say she needs braces.”

That single statement set my imagination in overload for the coming weeks until my next appointment. Plagued with extremely crooked and overlapping teeth ever since my first baby tooth had fallen out, I now pictured myself with movie star perfect teeth, gleaming white, and perfectly straight. I would no longer have to worry about smiling in pictures, for fear of showing the world how ugly my teeth truly were. After that first appointment, I believed instead that I was on the way to showing the world what a radiant smile I really had. Those dreams, however, were shattered from the moment I sat down in the high backed blue chair on my return appointment to the orthodontist's office. I watched as the nurse brought out an assortment of parts that would create the braces to be put on my teeth: glue, metal wire, rubber bands, metal rings to go around my molars, tighteners for rubber bands, and various bits and pieces. At the same moment as the acidic taste of glue first touched my tongue, I realized simultaneously that braces really, and very truly were not, the glamorous thing that I had imagined before. Braces, in fact, soon became the bane of my existence. Not only did they hurt my tender teeth by stretching and tightening them continuously, the metal wire also sliced into the delicate flesh on each side of my mouth. Every time the pain became slightly bearable again, it would be time for another appointment at the orthodontist’s, where my braces would be almost violently tightened by the nurses.

This situation was further exacerbated by an agonizing incident that occurred during my 7th grade PE class. The sport focused upon on that day was t-ball, played with a plastic ball and a plastic bat (most likely thought of as a safer alternative to the metal bats of norm), but little did the teachers know just how much of a hazard that plastic bat could pose, especially if in the wrong hands. The class was split into two teams, and my team was up to bat first. We were all plastered against the wall of the gym furthest from the batter, in case a pitch went wrong and, heaven forbid, someone was struck by a plastic whiffle ball. A girl I didn’t know very well was up to bat, and she had struck out the first two pitches. On the third pitch, she swung ferociously at the ball, and there was a plastic zing as the bat made contact. Maybe it was in her excitement from hitting the ball, or maybe she simply did not understand an elementary rule of sports using bats (NEVER throw the bat), I’ll never know. But all I did know was that I watched in a sort of hazy dreamlike state as a massive blue blur spun at me, and then with a THWACK, hit me straight in the mouth. Next thing I knew, the metallic taste of blood filled my mouth, and I was afraid touch anything with my tongue, in trepidation of finding broken teeth, mutilated flesh, or anything of that sort. I touched my lip gently with my finger, and was aware of a stinging pain running through my lower lip. I gingerly pulled my lower lip away from my teeth (as it seemed to be stuck), and felt it tear free from the metal hooks of my braces that had slammed into the flesh from the force of the bat.

Apprehensively, I touched my now free lip with my tongue, to find that the various lacerations I had sustained were in fact a perfect imprint of every metal hook and wire fastened to my teeth.