This morning, at precisely nine fifty-four, my mother and I entered a building roughly the size of a small house, owned by Dr. Bob Kravitz. I surprised myself by doing this voluntarily, as I knew full well that this building is primarily used as an orthodontic surgery, and I was there to undergo a rather unpleasant orthodontic treatment commonly known as "braces". This came in the form of twenty-four metal brackets with dark purple rubber bands around them affixed to my teeth, accompanied by thin metal wires on the top and bottom.
When Dr. Kravitz notified us that he was ready for us to come into a small and ominous room down an unnaturally clean hallway, I seated myself on an extremely uncomfortable dentist's chair and leaned back. There I was subjected to an unexpectedly painful process lasting one hour.
Dr K kept my mouth open with a plastic thingymajig that yanked back my lips and kept my jaws wide open so that he could fish around in there with sharp tools and electrical whirring things. It is very painful to prop one's jaw open for a whole hour, but I was asleep for the most part, and listening to AC/DC on full volume on my iPod proved an excellent painkiller.
After that excessively uncomfortable hour, I had a mouthful of steel and rubber and a nasty taste in my mouth to show for it. The brackets rub against my teeth and I can't talk properly and it feels wierd and I can't close my mouth and they look funny.
But so very many people have tried to convince me that it WILL get better.
What doesn't kill us makes us stronger..........
Right?
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