A beautiful smile is always in style: Round Eleven
“Wow! I’m really impressed by these developments. Your teeth are looking great — the crossbite is more or less fixed, and your bottom teeth will all be completely straight by next month. I’m happy for you, not just as your doctor but as your friend…”
Doc thinks he’s my friend but really he’s just some dude who makes sadistic and unprofessional comments about how he enjoys torturing me. But he’s done a good job and he means well. I like him despite his superfluous gender-based commentary, mostly due to this morning’s recent announcement that “You might have these off in less than a year.” What?! No way.
They got new long-sleeve t-shirts for orthodontal staff. They’re baby blue, and on the front they say something about a SMILE, and on the back it’s something about STYLE (no, not my cliche subject line. Some other kitsch phrase.)
My assistant friend D. looked ridiculous wearing it, and my opinion is the new dress code has in fact morphed the formerly commendable professional, high-end office environment into something akin to summer camp, possibly because all the assistants and secretaries are under 30. The doctor is the only one who wears scrubs now, elevating him to The One With Authority. I should mention something about this to him on my next visit. He likes to talk style with me, which is ironic since I sported my ripped, inherited leather jacket, old, uncool jeans and socks-with-sandals accoutre today. It’s amazing what kind of weird corporate respect you get when you succeed in pretending to be young, hip, or both.
For those of you who actually care about the orthodontal specifics: today they put those white-metal clamp things onto some bottom teeth in an effort to turn them into a straight position. They repeated this process for a top tooth that’s being pulled forward. The impacted canine (sigh) is still impacted, but edging ever more rapidly down to the gum line, plus [insert creepy music here] you can now fully see half of the tooth in the gum, i.e., it’s emerging up from the gum’s surface like a quiet white submarine. It can’t really grow down yet, as the FST (Formerly Sideways Tooth) is blocking it, but next month we’ll pull that one into position (the position it should have taken when I was seven years old) and, by Thanksgiving or Christmas, God willing, all will be well.
Much love to all my anonymous adult homies from archwired.com with orthodontal problems. We suffer together, people…though I’m gonna be eating steak again before all y’all.