A beautiful smile is always in style: Round Fifteen
“I have a theory, completely hypothetical, of course.” I was vertical, lying on the sleek leather dentist chair. Doc was upside-down above me. “I think these two bottom teeth are glued together. I think they’ve been glued together for the past nine months.”
Doc tapped at it with some sharp instrument and we heard a crack. “Well geeze,” he said, “why didn’t you say something? You really have to learn to communicate with me.”
“I didn’t think I could possibly communicate with you any more than I already do. And I made the ridiculous assumption that, as the doctor, you would have realized by now that you had glued them together.”
“Well,” he sighed, “I’m glad you recognize your assumptions are ridiculous.”
Thus began another normal appointment at the sadistic orthodontist’s. He did some “discing” to the bottom teeth today, which means shaving the sides of them so they’ll line up together more cleanly, and he changed wires, and nothing hurt, and he yelled at me for deciding to attach rubber bands to random teeth, like the FST (formerly sideways tooth) to keep it from floating into the empty space that’s reserved for the canine tooth that is STILL on its slow way down from a sad life of impaction in my gums.
“Listen to me,” Doc chided. “DO NOT do that. DO NOT attach bands to that tooth. People do that, then they wonder why the root dies and their tooth falls out.” Falls out? Is that what happens? Whoops, sorry.
So now we wait another month for nothing to happen. All the speedy progress I made last spring has slowed to a very boring pace, since all my teeth are relatively straight now and the only main concern is the gaping hole in the front of my mouth because of the tooth that won’t show itself.
“You’re doing very well for someone on an 18-month plan,” Doc concluded, much to my horror.
“Maybe,” I said, “But I’m on a ‘12 to 14-month plan’, quote unquote, at least according to you last year.” So the moral of Round Fifteen is that my doctor is a liar, even if the lying is for my own good.
I’m no longer amused by this adventure. I want them off, I want them off, I want to bite into filet mignon, I want to not savor the taste of stretchy latex. Baaaaaaaaaaa!