The pursuit of having a bilateral, pearly set of teeth crept into my consciousness even before I knew my multiplication table. I had been a big fan of cute American girls beaming an expansive smile revealing a bracketed set of 20++ perfectly aligned teeth. I would’ve traded my Barbie dolls for braces laced with fluorescent pink elastics from end to end. Little did I know that it would be a very long wait before I could experience the sheer bliss of running my tongue over the sharp corners of cemented brackets.
one happy smile
So, I waited…
My panoramic jaw x-ray showed that the size of my jaws could not contain all the big chunks of second molars that were erupting into my mouth. I suppose the impacted molars were trapped somewhere inside my gums. I did not understand any of this. The next thing I knew was I was being swung down a dental chair and tada!–my initiation to the wonderful world of conscious sedation had begun.
panoramic jaw x-ray
I can still vividly recall the bitter-sweet aftermath of each of the 13 impacted teeth (of all sorts) that was extracted from my premature jaws—the tingly sensation on my gums that once held a healthy tooth, the blood blotted pillows, the oversized protrusion in my cheek that is a cotton ball cushion, and, best of all, an unbeatable diet of pure decadence: ice cream (of all sorts) that can be prolonged (with a bit of acting skills) for three days.
13 teeth less after… still, I waited…
I was appointed to go back to the clinic. After days of blissful anticipation, I readied myself and proceeded in my favorite floral dress. To my dismay, not a bracket was cemented on my teeth. I knew that the procedure usually takes two hours; mine was less than a fraction of a minute. My kind dentist simply handed me a tiny silver key and a plastic case of some sort. The content was a grave nightmare, a merciless modern-day torture item—an Expansion.
I cried every time my dad would pop the key in my expansion, expanding the mouthpiece a tenth of a millimeter each time. My suffering brought much hope to my kind dentist as she saw incremental improvement on my teeth that only a dentist could see. Soon, I got used to my slime green colored mouthpiece-companion. This lasted for almost a year, until it was accidentally thrown into a garbage chute.
I waited, still…
Five years later, my much-awaited desire was fulfilled. My teeth were lined with braces. Though a bit substandard, I thought they were dazzling.
Two years after, I severely dislocated my lower jaw. Good-bye braces, hello splint.
Again, I waited…
A special kind of braces was cemented on my teeth, not porcelain but state-of-the-art—better than those on the cute American girls.
Now that waiting is over and my braces are gone, looking back makes me think that maybe having a teeth phobia of some sort would have added sheer thrill to this article.
~FEARLESS IN PINK
Picture your self editing a word document with three others all at the same time in separate computers. Thanks to Google Docs you can actually do that. If an entire line gets deleted, it’s just too funny to trace who did it. I had the most hilarious time. Forget the paper trail and the “track changes” function of Word and edit while you laugh! There is this theory by one decoder that 10,000 BC was written using google docs with several people simultaneously editing!
