See a similarity?

Maryn's new nickname is Sharkie. A week or two ago, Suzanne noticed that she has a new tooth coming up behind her current row of front teeth. We told her to just keep wiggling the old tooth with her tongue and that it would come out sooner or later. She's terrified of her tooth coming out because "What if it drops onto the floor?" and "There will be blood in my mouth!" Consequently, I don't think she's doing much to get it out. Now, as you can see, she has a second tooth coming up and she officially has two rows -- just like a shark.

I remember being afraid to lose my teeth when I was a kid and my dad trying to convince me to let him tie fishing line around the loose one and jerk it out. I don't think I ever went for that. I do remember that, when I finally lost that first one, it wasn't a big deal. It didn't hurt or even bleed that much -- it just sort of popped out. I keep trying to convince Maryn of that but, little chicken that she is, she doesn't believe me. The dentist has said we can either let them come out on their own or we can have them pulled but, either way, the new ones will come in crooked. Sigh.

Ah well. Getting my braces tightened got me out of at least half a day of school every month in junior high so they weren't all bad. Mom was always a softie and, even though she knew I felt well enough to go back to school and function, she didn't always make me. My tightening appointments with the kind but secretly malicious Dr. Smith were usually around lunch time and so, once they were over, I only had a couple of hours of school left. I complained that my mouth hurt, which it did, and Mom didn't usually make me go back.

My teeth straightened up in record time. I only had them for a year and a half rather than the projected four years and, to this day, when I see Dr. Smith he still points out what a good job he did with me. (I'm not sure if that's a compliment about how good looking I am or how fabulously talented he is.)I remember one day in early high school during potato harvest, I was sitting on a hay bale waiting for the last truck of the day to roll into the cellar. All the workers were sitting around, dirt in our ears and up our noses, looking like we'd been dragged through the fields ourselves. April Summers, daughter of the boss, was there and at one point when we were talking she stared at me and said, "You have really pretty teeth." This was almost twenty years ago so obviously the fact that I remember it today means I took it as a pretty nice compliment. (April was really cute. Too young for me. Too bad too. Dad always advised me to find some rich farmer's daughter so I could be set for life.)

I had a metal retainer band across the back of my teeth that was moored to my two lower canines. Dr. Smith said at the time that, without it, my mouth would begin to shift and go back to the way it was. I took him at his word and didn't think about it until we were living in Boise and I went in to get my teeth cleaned my new dentist acted like I had orthodontic equivalent to a Model T in my mouth. He was simultaneously charmed and horrified that I had dental technology that he thought was so archaic in my mouth. Suzanne insisted for years that it needed to come off but I stuck to my guns (gums?) and never bothered. Then, last year, fate and a really tough piece of candy settled the question. I was eating a Reisen chocolate in my kitchen and, all at once, something broke. I pulled the gooey glob of candy from my mouth to find one of the mooring bands and the retaining wire sticking out of it. That was it. I made an appointment, had the other band removed, and everything cleaned up and I've been ancient-retainer free for a year now. I realize mouths move pretty slowly but, so far, nothing major has shifted. I don't look like this guy:



Not yet anyway.

Hmm. Ever notice how I can start off talking about almost any subject in the world and it always ends up turning into some misty-eyed remembrance of my past? Maybe I need to change the name of this blog to Narcissist Penny Press.