Never Again

A Story by Silvertide

A short story about when I got my braces off.

After waiting for about fifteen minutes, the door finally opened and one of the orthodontist’s assistants called my name. I first looked to my mom, who, while smiling, mentioned how exciting it was for me to get my braces off. Not wanting to make a scene, I just smiled and stood up, hoping to get this over with quickly. But to my dismay, the assistant said in her high annoying voice, “It’s your big day right? You’re getting your braces off!” My plans at going about this process discreetly now ruined, I nodded and smiled. “Yeah, I can’t wait.” While deep down I was thinking: Just take them off already!

To my great pleasure, the assistant lead me to the first seat on the left…aka the seat closest to the door through which everyone enters. Any passerby would be able to get a perfect view of my face as it’s being meddled with. I was overjoyed at this realization. Deep down I had a feeling I’d get that seat.

After taking my seat, unaware of what would later befall me, the assistant started talking again. “Alright, so after she comes and takes your braces off, I’m just going to take off the glue, take pictures of your teeth, make molds for your retainer and then take some x-rays. After that you’ll get your retainer and you’ll be all set to go. While you wait, read this. It will explain what you need to know about your retainer.” You’re just going to do six different things? Come on lady! That’s a lot!

Slightly over-whelmed, I read over the paper. I had plenty of time to do so since she, or otherwise known as the orthodontist, takes forever to make her rounds. At one point while I was awaiting her arrival, one of the assistants, who had been waiting for her for well over twenty minutes, had to actually go and retrieve the orthodontist so that she could take a quick glance at another patient’s teeth, which literally takes two seconds, before heading off to the next victim. After that, the poor guy was free to go. Trips to the orthodontist wouldn’t take so long if it weren’t for the fact that the only orthodontist in the entire building has to have the final say and release you back to freedom. Anyways, one part of the paper particularly made me stop and think: Also, if you wish to be checked past your 2 year retention time, there will be a fee charged for each office visit. Basically they would monitor your retainer for two years, I guess in case they notice your teeth shifted because you wore it for 11 hours a day and not 12, and if you wanted them to keep monitoring your retainer, for God knows why, you would have to pay extra.

I for one would never pay extra to have the orthodontist breathe down my neck for any longer than necessary. I’ve had orthodontists messing with my mouth since the second grade, I’m now in eleventh, and I want nothing to do with them anymore. I suspect that only the very meticulous or very wealthy would care enough to pay extra money for those services.

When she finally arrived, she grabbed what looked like pliers and went right into my mouth. Usually when my bands and wires are replaced, they pull the wires out slowly and unwind each individual band, but today it went differently. While painfully working her way through my mouth with the plier-like object, she began snapping my braces off, or at least it felt like that. At first I didn’t even know what she was doing and I was very confused, and as if expecting this, about half-way through the process she notified me... “I’m taking your braces out.” Isn’t it a bit late for that? You’re already half-way done, how about you tell me what you’re doing before you go into my mouth with pliers.

After that she left and the assistant popped up again, a smile on her face. “I’m sure you’re very happy to finally have your braces off, now let’s remove that glue, I’m sure it feels weird.” I agreed to this, trying to get a few words in before my mouth was attacked again. For some reason, both dentists and orthodontists alike love to talk to you while they’re working on your mouth, even though you have no way of responding. It makes me feel bad that I’m not keeping up with the conversation and instead just listening to them talk. I suspect that you have to enjoy talking about yourself a lot to take on either of these jobs.

Anyways, I soon learned that taking off the glue is way worse than taking off the actual braces. With a spinning razor-like tool in hand, the assistant went into my mouth, shaving away at my teeth. At first I thought she was shaving off more than just the glue, but eventually I got used to it.

Sometimes the spinning razor didn’t serve her needs and she had to use one of those evil hooks that dentists always use to scrape at your teeth and puncture your gums. Using this wonderful tool, she scraped across my teeth and sometimes my gums in order to remove the glue. And when the hook didn’t work, she brought out those maniacal pliers that had been used to snap off my braces. Taking the pliers, which I despised greatly at this point, she began snapping at my back molars. She did this so much that I actually heard an unsettling crack more than once before she was done.

Finally, with all of that glue out of the way, she told me, “I made a little bit of a mess, but just go and brush your teeth and rinse your mouth out now.” Nodding, I went over to the back of the room where the sink was, wondering how strange I looked to others after that experience, and stepped in front of the mirror. “A little bit of a mess”, was putting it rather nicely. What I saw was blood everywhere, including on the blue napkin tied around my neck, and some sort of white substance which I suspected was the glue. When I opened my mouth to take a gander at my teeth, I discovered that one tooth in particular looked extra bloody.

Unsettled, I quickly grabbed a toothbrush and began earnestly brushing my teeth, hoping to get rid of the blood, but instead opted to just rinse my mouth out in the sink until all of it was gone. I then returned to my favorite seat and sat down as directed. She told me to tell her if anything felt weird, but before I could answer her question she headed off somewhere else. As I awaited her return, I looked to the table to my right where the removed braces still sat. Next to them were the pliers which seemed to have something white and bloody clamped between them.

Feeling horrified, I was then reminded of the extra-bloody tooth I had seen in the mirror. I stared more closely at the white object trapped within the tool before hurriedly checking my mouth for missing teeth. Had she removed one of them without my even realizing it? When she finally came back, I pointed out that one of my gums felt a bit weird. After checking it out she told me the gum was a bit irritated and went in with the hook again. After digging around the irritated gum, irritating it further, she finally claimed to have found and removed a piece of glue. Hesitantly, I asked her about the white and bloody object still stuck in the pliers. She picked up the pliers and showed me, to my relief, that it was only the cement that had been stuck to my back molars. Oh, great. I was so happy that it wasn’t one of my teeth; rather it was only a little cement.

After that, she then led me over to the wall where she took a few pictures of my teeth and jaw before leading me back to the seat, where I had to hold my cheeks apart with plastic appliances while she took pictures of my teeth up close. At one point, while I still held my cheeks apart, she stuck a whole mirror in my mouth in order to “take a picture of the reflection of your teeth”. This left my mouth very sore.

After making the molds for my retainer, I had to sit on a bench in the back of the room for fifteen minutes before I was finally able to get my x-rays taken. Apparently the pictures weren’t enough. The way in which they take x-rays of your jaw is strange, but I think the second method was the weirdest. You have to align your ears with these two metal cone-shaped things so that they can be half-moved inside your ears. Then another rod comes down and rests atop your nose. I think I know the reason why no one moves their head when they are in that position, no one wants to injure their ears. You can bet I wasn’t going to be the first. If my body tilted a little bit, the feeling of the metal brushing up against my ears was enough of a reminder to keep still.

After that, I finally received my retainers. After fitting them into my mouth “like a puzzle piece”, which by the way is very hard to say when you are wearing retainers, I was set free. When I came out my mother complained about how long she had been made to wait for me. She looked expectantly at me to smile but I refused, not wanting her to make a scene in front of everyone because I knew she was probably going to make a big deal about it. Mothers can be so emotional that way. When we were in the car I finally showed her my teeth. She was thrilled and so was I. I then vowed never again to go through the process of wearing braces, not even in another lifetime.