Following up on our umpteenth visit to the dentist in the past 25 years to correct our smile, we’re wondering if any of you have any mouth adventures to share.
We started visiting the orthodondist at age 8 (our parents liked to joke a wing on the Curtis home is named after us), the beginning of a journey that transformed us from a snaggletoothed pre-pubescent to a head-geared junior high nerd to the dazzling-grinned young adult with porcelain caps that would put the Cheshire cat to shame. We thought drooling in a vinyl recliner was behing us, but our gums are still aching from yesterday’s removal of said porcelain veneers with a drill (God bless nitrous oxide), to be replaced in two weeks with brand new, extra white models. (We insisted on a glimpse of the real teeth hiding under the veneers all these years; let’s just say if the temporary plate falls off this week we’re going to be scaring children with werewolf fangs.)
We’d like to thank our parents for sacrificing our tuition to an Ivy League college so we can bare our uppers with confidence, but we’ve always wondered if they were overzealous or if Jewish kids actually have worse teeth than our counterparts.
It turns out we do.