Smile!

     Even if I tried to be in denial about having a grandson old enough to turn into a teenager this summer, I’ve had other proof. He recently had his braces removed – an impossibility to me since it seems like they were just put on a few months ago.
Although it may have felt a little longer to my son-in-law, who was paying for them. 

     Orthodontics has probably come a long way from when I was growing up. My recollection is that my older sister went without caramels and popcorn forever; her braces were on for years and years. Now I also wonder about the credentials of the orthodontist my parents chose – her overbite returned, alive and well, after the braces were off.

          Both of my own kids have beautiful smiles today, thanks to their time with gleaming tinsel teeth; no Invisalign or perky pastels when they were in junior high. Not that getting there was easy for them. Or for me either. I still shudder at the medieval morning routine of inserting a key in my daughter’s palate expander and then cranking, preparing the field for the next step of braces. And then later there was the retainer that now lies at the bottom of Lake Hamilton. 

          I always counted my lucky stars that I hadn’t needed them. Or maybe since I was the second born, no one bothered. Kind of another version of the first baby versus second baby photo albums. I have a shy lateral incisor that’s grown increasingly bashful over the years, hanging back behind its neighboring bicuspid. I’ve learned, like Barbra Streisand, to present my left side to the camera if I want to avoid the gap-toothed look of someone with a refrigerator on the front porch and a hound dog under it.