Return of Brace Face

Remember a few weeks ago when my older daughter, E, got her braces? She was both delighted and appalled at them, as was I, but for different reasons. Well, I thought an update on the condition of her mouth was in order.

Her first appointment to see how things were going was not what we expected. I figured we would stop by after school and the orthodontist would take a looky-loo, maybe crank her expander, and tell us to come back in a week. After all, a nice space was already developing between her front Chiclets, somewhere between Madonna’s and Anna Paquin’s in the gap size department. The doctor did give her a couple of good cranks, which is fun if it’s not your mouth. But then his assistant wanted to change her rubber bands.

Since I never had braces, I didn't know that the real torture comes from the rubber bands. They encircle the brackets glued to each tooth, and nowadays, they come in a rainbow of colors. I have decided the reason for the variety is to give these young victims some small sense of control over what is happening inside their very heads. If they can pick out the colors on their teeth, maybe they won’t mind the braces and the accompanying pain so much.

According to E, that is utter bullshit, although she thankfully didn’t say it like that. Changing the rubber bands is about the third circle of Hell. They have to remove each rubber band with something that looks like needle nose pliers, and then take new rubber bands, ones that have yet to soften in saliva and lose a bit of their elasticity, and stretch them around the brackets. One at a time. That’s a total of twenty times; well, eighteen for E, since her adult canines have yet to join the rest of the party.

The rubber bands themselves are about the size of a seed bead, for those of you who are familiar with Native American crafts. Bigger than a poppy seed, maybe sesame seed size. They don’t have a whole lot of give. Add to that the fact that each tooth is being pushed around and has loosened up a bit, and you can imagine how good a little pressure on each one might feel. I now know why the wire is there. It’s to keep all the teeth from falling out. It’s a tooth cage, a guard rail.

Well, when E sat patiently with her mouth open wide, and don’t forget, her piehole is like a baby bird’s, the assistant removed the rubber bands until she lost control of one and the tooth bracket shot across the room. Not good. That meant that the wire had to be removed, then the glue residue scraped off that tooth, then another bracket glued onto the tooth, which then had to dry, before she could be rewired, and finally, rubber banded. Our five minute mouth check turned into a forty-five minute session of pre-teen water boarding.

We couldn’t even send her to school the next day with Motrin for her pain, because the bottle of the popular over the counter medicine said for adults, twelve and older, which E is not. The school nurse takes those directions more seriously than we do. So she could have children's chewables, which would get stuck in her braces, or liquid, which would require her drinking the entire bottle to give her a therapeutic dosage. Did I mention how tough my kid is?

We went back to the orthodontist last week for another check up. I had no idea that getting braces was going to be a new extracurricular activity. Had I known, we could have given up piano or guitar lessons to make time for it. Anyway, her expander had worked. She now has a space between her front teeth big enough for another tooth, which I am pretty sure was the point. She went back to the exam area, got the once over by the extremely friendly orthodontist, and then got wire on the top. The cranking of the expander was over, and while it will continue to sit in her mouth for six months, regular braces could commence. She was wired on her top teeth, and only one rubber band was added. A big one, hot pink, was stretched across that ravine between her incisors. It's a pretty obvious rubber band.

“Nice slingshot,” I told her. “You can shoot peas across the lunch room.” She gave me that look she is perfecting in response.

The best part, aside from the fact that I am not the one with the mouth hardware, is that we don’t have to go back for six weeks. So while she won’t be able to get black and orange rubber bands for Halloween, which bums me a little, she does get a break from stretching her mouth wide enough to rip the little corners. We are all chewing our gum secretly, in hiding, so as not to make her mad and fire some projectile out of her mouth arsenal. And yes, she still does sound a bit like John Merrick.