The Sunday Memory Drawer - Bracing Myself for Dental Work

 

Last week, I took you through my earliest years of dental care.   Now it gets a little more complicated.

I was a kid and I was hearing it every day from the other yokels in my school.

"Eh, what's up, Doc?"

"How fast can you eat an ear of corn?"

"Can I show a movie on your two front teeth?"

Years later, screw all of you!

Yes, I had two big ole buck teeth.  The Bugs Bunny look all the way.  And, as I progressed through each grade in Grimes Elementary School, the nasty comments increased at geometric intervals.  Probably because the overhang of my top dental plate kept getting bigger and bigger.  I was starting to look like the upper deck at Tiger Stadium.

The answer was an easy one.  Braces for you, young man. 

Over the next four years, I'd be making regular visits to the big building on the right of the photo above.  10 Fiske Place in downtown Mount Vernon, New York.  The daytime home of my orthodontist, Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player.  That's exactly how he introduced himself to me.   And anybody else he talked to.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player."

Ha ha.  The joke got stale pretty quickly.

Upon my very first meeting with Dr. Ash, it was apparent to both of us that we'd been spending a lot of time together.  And that we might be able to get that backyard swimming pool from the money my parents would have to cough up to get their son de-rabbitized.

The first step in the process is the immortalization of your miserable overbite.  A cement mold is made of your bite and Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player was so proud of this that he had a whole wall in his office devoted to displaying the miserable dental structure of unsuspecting teenagers all over Mount Vernon.  It was the Grauman's Chinese Theater for bicuspids.  Mine quickly joined the display window.

After one long look at Len's Red Cross Disaster of a mouth, Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player designed a very aggressive and protracted plan of attack.  It was going to be the heaviest of artillery.  Full braces on the top and the bottom.  For a while, rubber bands attaching it all.  Then bite retainers.  Three years of 10 Fiske Place and Rome was built quicker.

The first volley was pounds of US Steel thrown across both the top and bottom of my mouth.  Cemented into little studs that surrounded some of my teeth.  I no longer had a smile.  I had a 1965 Buick Skylark.

It took some getting used to all the chrome I was now sporting.  There were foods I had to avoid.  Gum was verboten.  And goodbye to salt water taffy on our annual Atlantic City vacations.

Even with all the glue and paste adorning my cheesy grin, snafus could still occur.  One weekend summer afternoon, I was watching a Charlie Chan movie on TV with Grandma.  Suddenly, I felt a pop and then the sharp jagged edge of a wire in my cheek.  Uh oh.

The top brace had escaped its mooring and was now embedded in the inside flesh of my mouth.  It was time for an emergency visit to 10 Fiske Place.  Except...

"Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player is on vacation.  He'll be back a week from Monday."

D'oh!

Now, most families would immediately seek out whoever the replacement doctor was.  Not my folks.  Quicker action was to be taken.

My father took a wire cutter and gave me immediate relief.

The rubber band era didn't have such dire repercussions, but there were bumps in the road nonetheless.  A loud, raucous laugh would also widen my mouth and then, suddenly....

SNAP!!!

Ow!!!

I quickly became an expert at being able to demonstrate all sorts of loud noises without opening my mouth more than a fraction of an inch.

You don't see it happening when you're in the middle of a relationship with an orthodontist, but the treatment does eventually work.  At first, Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player could fit his whole thumb into my overbite.   Slowly, less and less and less of his thumb would fit.  He'd pull my cement choppers from his display case and show them to me.  The quintessential before and after you normally see in Jenny Craig ads.  Except, Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player was so proud of his work on me that he would share it with strangers in the waiting room.  I became a major part of his resume.  If this happened today, I'd undoubtedly be the first mouth you'd see on his website.

"Wow, your teeth were really that bad?"

Yes, they were and thank you, Doctor, for the wonderful boost in my self esteem.

When my teeth were pronounced straight and the novelty of my mouth wore off, Dr. Arthur Ash Not The Tennis Player and I ended our weekly trysts.  He removed the dental shackles and, at last, I would be able to smile and show everybody my new never-had-a-cavity-before teeth.

Except, now braceless, food bits from meals of three Thanksgivings ago reappeared in all their glory.  Along with all the bacteria and plaque that went with them. 

I was not done with regular visitations to 10 Fiske Place.  Indeed, I was just moving down the hall.  To my new regular dentist.

Enter Dr. Paul Cipes.

To be continued...

Dinner last night:  Popcorn at the movies.