| By :
Mark Etinger
The teeth wiggled and fell out about when everyone else's did, at the age of five. I'd find a couple of dollars under my pillow thanks to the tooth fairy and would feel that frisson of childhood excitement and belief in the unknown. But my teeth came in all kinds of crooked. I didn't know why and it wasn't that weird but when I was eight and at the orthodontist he told me to come back next month and get braces. I was not pleased, but they said I'd have nice teeth when it was all over. I went to have them put on and I chose to have the clear ones, which are much bigger than the large ones, and stupidly, I added colorful rubber bands to them, because I was eight. So they were just as colorful, albeit less metallic, as normal braces, and bigger and more uncomfortable too. Every six weeks I went to have them tightened. It was agony. The metal dug into my cheek and I had to use wax to protect the callouses from splitting open and bleeding, which they inevitably did anyway. And after seven months it was over. I thanked goodness it hadn't lasted any longer. But my teeth didn't stay straight for long. I was nine years old; my mouth was still growing. And we were moving. I found a new Medicaid orthodontist, who said that the first one should have waited for me to reach puberty to give me braces, that they were only mildly corrective. I would need braces again. But I wouldn't hear of it. I was twelve, now old enough to stand up for myself. Most of my friends were getting their braces off in a few months, and here I was having to go back under the proverbial knife. I refused. They gave me options. I could wear a retainer, which might help straighten my teeth the rest of the way, but only if I wore it all the time. I said what about Invisalign, no ugly metal bar there. They said you don't qualify. I cursed my teeth and accepted the retainer. I wore it as often as I could for a year until they said, okay, now you only have to wear it while sleeping. Today my teeth look pretty straight, but if you get up close you'll see they're not perfectly so as are the teeth of my compatriots. If only I had visited the right Medicaid orthodontist the first time.
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