Orthodontia

My daughter lost her retainer, and I replaced it today at a cost of $550. As I pondered whether or not to take it out of her allowance, I remembered my orthodontia experience. My parents left my braces on for four and a half years after I stopped seeing an orthodontist. Apparently they could not afford to continue the payments to the good doctor and refused out of their own embarassment to see him one more time and have the braces removed from my teeth. And so I went through high school with crummy braces on my teeth, and was too embarassed to ask girls out on dates. I also got used to having the braces dig into my upper and lower lip when I got punched in the mouth in a fight or checked while playing soccer.

Looking back on it, it makes sense. My father was drinking heavily at this point and barely working. He'd hit his medical office at around 11, take lunch at noon (and stay in the lunch room drinking coffee to get over his hangover and discussing his ultra right wing view of workd affairs with doctors for an hour and a half, sitting there when one group would leave to go back to work waiting for the next group to come to lunch), then take off from his office around 2. He couldn't have been making much. And of course, the family ethic was to hide the dysfunction at all costs. They never would have had my braces removed because they never would have admitted to anyone that they could no longer afford them.

Before I went to college, I pulled the braces from my teeth with a pair of pliers, and scraped the orthodonics cement off my teeth with a small screwdriver.

I didn't take the cost of the new retainer out of my daughter's allowance.