Putting money where the mouth is

One advantage to being my age is that I have already passed through most of the phases of life that people have to go through.

Childhood diseases, my own and my kids', are behind me. I have lived through the sleepless years, when I had babies. And I have lived through the teenage years. My own were not nearly so hard on me as my kids' were.

Altogether, I have launched seven children into their teenage years, prepared or otherwise. They all made their first trip to the DMV. They all went to prom once or twice. They all went to a few concerts. And we have been to see the orthodontist approximately 353 times.

The concerts and prom I could handle, and I could cope with most of the other milestones associated with the teenage years. I still clench my teeth when I think about the orthodontics chapter of my life, though.

This is what kind of luck I had: the first three kids all had too many teeth for their mouths, or more precisely, teeth too big to fit in there. (Grandma called those kind of teeth butter paddles.)

When the fourth child came, I thought I had it made. She had actual spaces between her baby teeth. For her first six years, I thought I was going to get $2,500 ahead in life thanks to this child's big mouth. Not a chance. Her permanent teeth were tiny little chiclets which didn't begin to fill up all that space. Grandma didn't know what to call them. Besides that, some of them were missing. Just not there and never were.

In those days my car could find it's own way to the orthodontist's office. I knew which magazines he subscribed to and how often he redecorated. His receptionist was on a first-name basis with my dog, the only member of the family with straight teeth.

I think we missed something like twenty appointments during my time in the the orthodontic years, but my percentages were pretty good. And the orthodontist didn't complain. We were his bread and butter. In fact he probably had me to thank for that boat in his garage, and when he saw mouths five through seven he probably saw luxury cars and European vacations. Cruise tickets traded for tin grins.

For the privilege of living with teenagers who wouldn't smile, wouldn't eat in public and avoided half of the foods available for human consumption, I paid that kind of money. And those are only some of the disadvantages.

After the patient passes through the brace phase, he moves into the retainer phase of orthodontic treatment. Retainers are something designed to help keep teeth straight when the braces come off. You pay a lot for them and then keep them on the bathroom counter where they function as room decor, except for when you keep them in a pocket or on the floor beside the bed. The last two places serve to keep the retainer new as it will have to be replaced if it is sat upon, washed in the washing machine, or stepped upon. Furthermore, you simply cannot display a broken retainer on the bathroom counter.

I know where you should keep a retainer, but who am I? I only paid for them. Should I have taken the retainers to work or school or wherever the mouth in question was? Well, I couldn't tell whose was whose. How could I give a retainer to a teenager who already had one in his mouth? But don't doubt my commitment. I have been known to beg the school lunch ladies for permission to go through the garbage in hopes of finding a retainer that might have been scraped off a tray.

I used to wish that the Granola movement would gain enough ground that naturally occurring teeth placement would be more desirable than artificial alignment. But no, the movement got a little bit lost when it came to physical appearances.

I'm not sure I would want to be launching teenagers these days. Too many things could be out of alignment. However, if I were to be text messaging my kids about the location of their retainers, my reminders might look like this: :-)$$) ?