Mouthwear Stories: Finishing The Treatment

This story was retrieved from the old M's Mouthwear website from an internet archive. Finishing The Treatment

I was 12 in 1963 and my parents forced me to undergo orthodontic treatment. I put up such a fuss that the ortho did a real fast job and did not even use his regular full banded approach. I flat out refused to wear any type of headgear and my mother relented. I ended up being banded on my six top front teeth, with just a bar on the bottom. I wore two elastics. I hated wearing them, but everyone else in the office had much worse stuff on, so I just did my year and a half and got my retainer. I had a permanent retainer on the back of my bottom front teeth, and a regular retainer on top. By the time I was done with grammar school, I wasn't ever wearing the top one any more, and pretty much skipped any follow up appointments. I was a junior in high school and had a three day weekend for Columbus Day. It was a Thursday night and my mother came into my room for something as I was going through my top drawer. I pulled out my retainer box and my mother wanted to see how it fit, I hadn't had it on in about two and a half years. No way I could get it over any of my teeth. My mother got very upset and started calling the orthodontist a crook (she was a hot tempered woman on a good day) and that we paid good money for my teeth to be straight. She said we were going to his office the next day and doing something about it. I tried to calm her down and said my teeth were fine, but she was determined. The next day, without an appointment she dragged me back to the orthodontist. He was in the office doing paper work, with no patients scheduled. It was the first time I had ever seen two adults scream at each other the way they did. She called him a fake, and he was screaming that it was my fault entirely, pointing out we did not go along with his recommended treatment, and I obviously never wore the retainer. After about a half hour they reached an agreement that he would "finish the treatment" and my parents would pay another $250. Also my mother agreed to do it his way and guaranteed him I would cooperate with any and all appliances. I just figured he would cook up another retainer and the whole thing would blow over. He put me in a chair and put separators between some of my teeth, upper and lower. The last time that happened he only used a bar on the lower, and he wanted an upper impression on Monday, so I figured retainers for sure. No problem. My mother dropped me off at 8 a.m. sharp for my appointment, but I though it just meant I was going to school late that day. I walked in and there was one other patient and her mother. And they were obviously fighting. "Crystal" (her real name was Terry Ann, she wanted to be a hippie and thought Crystal was a better name) was a freshman at my school, and had gone to my grammar school, so we had seen each other for years, but didn't really know each other. She was kind of a loner, but definitely wanted to hang with the freaks. I wanted to hang with the cools, the macho testosterone crowd, the real men. (So I was a stupid high school wannabe). Apparently Crystal felt that, even though her teeth were crooked, orthodontics was not 'natural' and that they would make her a 'tool of the establishment'. (It was the sixties.) She once again threatened to walk out, and her mother threatened her with St. Leo's a very strict Catholic school. I though it was all pretty funny and she saw me chuckling across the waiting room. The issue decided, her mother left and said she would be back at three to pick her up. We were alone for about 15 minutes. She was asking me what I was laughing at and I told her I had the same fight four years ago with my parents and won. She wanted to know what I was doing there and I told her I needed new retainers. We both agreed that full banded braces were lame. I told her how much I hated mine when I had them, and that I wasn't even fully banded. I also told her a joke about Dr. Moore's slogan "Smiles that last forever." The kids said it was "Braces that last forever", he did not have a reputation as someone who got you in and out of the appliances, he took his time. Terry Ann knew she would wear them at least until she graduated, and made no bones about saying how much she hated the idea. I made some jokes about changing her name from Crystal to Silver and from Terry Ann to Terry Bands, but I could see she was really depressed and shut up. I was still cocky as hell about it and she hated that. Then we got called back. He saw me first and asked me how the separators felt, and after I said not to bad, he took them all out and took an impression of both jaws. It was obvious that he was really mad at me and my mother and he made some remark about doing it right this time. He told me his assistant would be doing the work today and left. The assistant wheeled in a tray of tools and I looked over to see a full set of bands, upper and lower, on a model. I looked in shock at the assistant who just said calmly 'let's get started.' She put the lip spreader in and started the long job of cementing them in place. I started to get up when Dr. Moore shot out of nowhere and started screaming at me as a spoiled little brat and that I better sit down and shut up. He actually had me scared and I meekly let her cement everything on. She was done wiring in the archwires by one o'clock. The Dr. Moore came back in and told me the reality of it all, how we were starting from the beginning and doing it the right way and that if I did not cooperate, it was my mothers problem and he already had her check for full payment. He told me to expect about three years of appliances. It ended up being three and a half. Then he looked at the assistant and said 'let's start him today with his facebow.' 'So soon?' she asked. 'Yeah he is a special case, I want his mother to know she is getting her money's worth. Use soft traction, we have plenty of time. Make sure you give him the rules too.' It was a purple cervical strap attached to a facebow. The straps came in soft, medium or hard and he gave me a soft one. He wouldn't use the adjustable ones either, since patients kept making the tighter, he made each one a certain length, and stapled the metal attachment on himself. The rules were basic, no horseplay, minimum 14 hours a day, and always wear it in the office. It was one thirty, an hour and a half before my mother came back. By this time the afternoon appointments were beginning to show up as school started to let out. I was told to wait in the waiting room. I walked out and saw Terry Ann sitting in a chair looking at the ground. I still remember the look on her face as she looked up and saw me. At first it was embarrassment, then confusion since I now had a full set of braces and headgear, not retainers. Her lips were clenched tight. She looked like she wanted to say something but just kept pulling her lips over the bands, afraid someone would see her braces. I didn't remember the braces looking that bad the first time, didn't expect them this time and had never felt full bands before. It was then that I first felt the horror of having a mouthful of braces. I had spent the last two years making fun of kids with less metal than I now had on, and knew it was going to come back and haunt me. When I tried taking the headgear off, the receptionist would remind me of the rule about wearing it in the office. We didn't say a word for about 15 minutes. She would just look at me in my headgear (she got hers a month later) and look back down, like someone who has just been sentenced to jail. I looked at her when she ran her fingers over her the bands, like that might make them go away. They didn't. We both kept looking at ourselves in the mirrored base of the lamp on the table. She spoke first 'nice retainers.' it was a cold shot, but I had given her abuse before so I guess it was fair enough. 'Well you have braces too.' 'No kidding.' We actually became good friends in college and kept laughing at how mean we were to each other that day. After about five minutes of that one of the the guys in my class walked in for a retainer check. He was the guy I had named Metal Mike when we were freshman because of his braces. I tried hiding behind a magazine and he saw me and started laughing. 'Hey they don't look that bad, I hardly noticed,' as he started laughing again. 'Yeah, right, you can see them from the parking lot. This is great, see you in school tomorrow and remember to wear your headgear.' It was then that Terry Ann looked at me and said 'we're both geeks now'. And we were. What I remember most was seeing the expression I felt on her face. The covering of my face each time the door opened and some one came in. Or the feeling of talking to someone you know and watching them stare at the braces. I guess on the MouthWear page this will seem stupid, but we both felt like we were just thrown out of our chosen cliques (no one in the macho crowd wore braces and after a month of being called braceface, metalmouth etc.. I stopped hanging around them. It was even worse at the football games since my cousin was on the team and my mother went to each game and made me wear the facebow, I went from macho to geek, at least in my own mind.) My mother and Dr. Moore had an ongoing battle and she absolutely made sure I wore my headgear and rubber bands all the time I was not in school, so I spent a lot of time in the library and in my room. Terry ended up in a high pull style headgear. She kept trying to be a hippie but got busted by a teacher with some pot and ended up at St. Leo's anyway. She ended up at Ohio State with the braces still on until the end of her freshman year. She hated then every bit as much in college as she did the first day.