My Braces
(Or How I Got Adult Ortho And Was Inspired to Do This Website)
A few years ago, I embarked on an orthodocntic journey as an adult with braces. I started my treatment following a yearly checkup with my dentist, when I was told I had some serious crowding that if untreated could result in losing some teeth. I was suprised, but set up my appointment with an orthodontist, and sure enough, was advised that I needed to get braces.
I never had braces as a kid, in fact I was often told that my teeth and smile were quite straight. Now, as an adult of 33, I was suprised that orthodontia had now entered my life. And so, shortly afterward, I went to my ortho and in several appointments, received my braces, first my uppers and then my lowers, for a full set of metalmouth hardware. Well, not exactly fully metal... I had clear on top and metal on the bottom. And elastics on each side to pull them together.
But my adult braces experience did bring back memories of growing up in the seventies and eighties, a time when some of my friends wore braces during their adolescence. I remember occassionally hearing complaints about their braces, and gripes about some unpleasant aspect of their treatment. There was also the occasional signs of embarrassment and discomfort at having a metal mouth, and the little rituals carried on discreetly of putting on new elastics in the middle of class. Now, as a thirty-something, I found myself experiencing much the of the same, so many years later.
I got to experience the task of showing up for work for the first time in my braces, and of having people see me for the first time. I got used to the usual "you got braces" comments. Shortly after getting my full braces on, there was a professional conference I had to attend . . . my first such conference with my hardware. No comments there, but just a feeling of having something conspicuous and noticable on my teeth. And then there was the hardware: the brackets, the wires, various types of elastics positioned various ways, metal twisty-wires which were quite visible. And the rituals of putting on the elastics on to the tiny hooks on my teeth, and of using braces wax to prevent the wires from poking me.
The upshot of this is that it brought to mind a lot of memories of braces, especially braces in the Seventies and Eighties when I was growing up, when it was less common, and particularly unusual for adults. Braces were sometimes portrayed in TV and movies as a dreaded adolescent indignity, a youthful scourge not unlike wearing glasses and getting acne (the latter two I was quite familiar with as a teen).
So I was inspired to put together this website, devoted to memories of orthodontia over the years.
