Adventures in Orthodonture

I've probably mentioned this to you before, but Cory is seven years younger than me. Most of the time, I don't really think about the age difference. It isn't that big of a deal. But every now and then, he'll say or do something that makes me feel really old. Like he'd never seen an episode of "Square Pegs" until about four months ago.

Well, here's another one: He's getting braces next week. Braces. He's had a retainer-type thing for about two years now... He has TMJ, and one of the ways they've been treating it is by trying to space his teeth out. Well, braces are the next step.

I'm no stranger to orthodontic torture. For about a year (primarily 6th grade), I wore a horrific device called a Frankel Appliance. It's used to correct an overbite, and, in essence, wires your jaw shut when you wear it. I was only allowed to remove it to eat, and talking while wearing it (we named it "Othello," though I don't know why) was nearly impossible. It didn't help that my sixth grade teacher was an evil man who mocked me the first few weeks I wore it. He eventually stopped calling on me in class because I couldn't answer coherently.

I had braces after Othello. 8th and 9th grades mostly, I think, though I've tried to block most of those years from my memory. I was already an ugly, awkward kid, so the braces weren't nearly as awful as Othello was. The fact that about 1/4 of the kids I knew also had braces made it a little less traumatizing.

We were talking about this at work the other day... braces are cool now. Seriously. I was just 20 years ahead of the trend.