4/9/07
I've had several fights with God (or, as I prefer, an Occasional Higher Power of My Choosing) over things inflicted on me in my childhood and adolescence. First off, he/she pulled the "appendicitis" thing, and I had to be rushed off to the hospital at five years old. I made it, and actually, I thought the hospital was Super Cool.
Then came croup, and thankfully, my parents had heard enough stories from the pioneer ancestors to put vaporizers in our rooms. Then came a horrible bout with acne, which I managed to vanquish in 1986 with Accutane, but not before having the shit kicked out of my face. Next? Unsustainably bad eyesight, which I LASIK'ed in 1999, lifetime chemical depression which I Celexed in 2002, and massive, burdensome lethargy which I Dexedrined in 2006.
And yet still, there were my teeth. Sean and I have teeth that have always skirted the edge of acceptable, and therefore we never had braces but always felt like we needed them. For my part, I had one tooth in the bottom front that came in poorly and just seemed to get worse.
I became deft at hiding it in pictures, and when I would bite an apple, I would look down at the marks and grow despondent. In ninth grade at Norfolk Academy, one of my friends (whose father was a famed orthodontist) once looked at my lower teeth and said "man, those are a goddamn mess," one of those things you never forget, even 25 years later.
Thank God my teeth were always pretty white, made even better by the fine folks at BriteSmile a few days before my wedding four years ago. Yet I always looked upon them, especially the one errant tooth, as a reminder that I could make all the cosmetic changes I wanted, and still be basically, unfixably flawed. I would watch the interviews I did on television back in the "13th-GEN" days, and all I could see was that bottom tooth, threatening to take over my entire body.
I have a great dentist in LA who uses cutting-edge technology, USB cameras, indestructible crowns, the whole thing. She and I went over everything wrong in my mouth, and we set about to fix the fillings, crowns and canals I'd let slip during those desperate years when I was still trying to keep the Purple House phones from being disconnected. I asked her if there was any easy way to get my teeth straightened without braces.
Turns out, not really. Teeth-straightening technology stalled at some point in 20th century; sure, there's those plastic mouth moldings you can wear at night, but they don't do any heavy lifting. Even behind-the-tooth braces offer little but slight nudges - if you want your teeth fixed, you're talking about full braces for at least 18 months. Needless to say, at this point in my life, I didn't see it as an option. I'm already married and I'm not a TV weatherman.
But, she said today, she can smooth down the edges of my problem tooth so that it matches the others. As long as I wasn't planning on getting braces, she could make it look, at any casual glance, like my bottom teeth were pretty much straight. I immediately said "yes, by all means yes" and she lay me down in the chair, and I heard the familiar squeal of changes inside my mouth.
When she gave me a mirror, I was astonished. I'm not going to make the cover of Dentist Fancy anytime soon, but it looked amazing. She'd even fixed a little bit of my two front teeth so they ran gracefully along my mouth. All the way home from Beverly Hills, I kept looking in the mirror: I had pit myself against the Higher Power of My Choosing, and I'd played him/her to a draw.
Hours later, Tessa and I were watching the premiere of "The Sopranos," and I'd settled into a melancholy. I realized I had this habit of touching that errant tooth when I was nervous during a movie or a show. I kept putting my finger on the tip of my bottom jaw, but after twenty-seven years, the tooth wasn't there anymore. I ran my finger along the row, and it was smooth, odd.
As the show finished, Tessa continued work on her computer, and I just sat there, wondering if I'd done something terrible. Had I taken away a basic part of my personality? Had I removed a key part of something bizarre that fueled creativity? I know this seems ludicrous, but I turned to my wife and said I felt like I had punished one of my children, told him he wasn't good enough, and shaved him down to make him look like everyone else. I even started to tear up, and believe me, with all the problems in the world, I know how that sounds.
It must be something else, it must be emblematic of a bigger issue, it must come from a deep well of self-hatred that takes a drill to discover. I have this great new smile and I'm stuck mourning something so ugly.
It's like when "Chandler" had his 'nubin' removed on FRIENDS.
Adult orthodonture really isn't that bad. My doctor has lots of clients well past their teenage years. My teeth will be unfettered in about 2 more months, and I won't miss my crooked bite one bit.
Yeah, Ian, I felt a little like that after I had my boobs done four years ago. I was so happy to be rid of the excess weight and to have a normal profile, but it took me a year to get used to what *wasn't* there anymore.
I grind my teeth so badly that I ground my lower teeth crooked. I've been wearing invisaline braces for the past year and it's been great. One of my front bottom teeth was very "hillbilly" and with my Carolina accent, it wasn't a good representation of who I am. I straightened that baby out and I'm ready to roll. Now if I could stop grinding my teeth, I wouldn't have to buy the $700 night guard to protect my $4000 teeth.
I hear ya. When I was about 9 years old, I had a mole removed from my chest, and it left a terrible scar right below my clavicle. People always asked me about it. Well, when I got married and had my wedding portrait done, the photographer air-brushed (or whatever) that scar off - without asking first. Anyway, I never really tried to hide the scar before, but I was surprised at how offended I was when I saw what he did to my portrait. Sometimes, it's our imperfections that help define us, whether we like them or not.
Look out! It's the monkey's paw.
I grew up with you Ian and positively had no awareness of your snaggletooth, or remember anyone else in the family talking about it.
My teeth aren't that straight especially on the bottom. Never given it a second thought.
i think this may be my favorite post, for reasons i may not be equipped to explain very well at this moment. is it that it reflects/captures the idea that it is possible for us to arrive at that seemingly elusive acceptance of who we are, flaws and all, but that that moment may come a wee bit too late, i.e., after we've done something about it? or is it the idea that, try as you might to best the Occasional Higher Power of Your Choosing, he/she always finds a way to show who's boss, in this instance by making you miss a nemesis? whatever it is, it's the basis for a killer episode of a show.
I believe you're experiencing a form of short-term grief. You'll soon find a new way to subconsciously express your feelings when your nervous or tense.
May I suggest several replacements:
-nail biting
-foot tapping
-signifact other hand/arm rubbing
-scribbling
i think it's not so much the tooth-changing that would spark the personality question, but rather the fact you made a choice to fit in, at least appearance-wise, rather than embrace your difference and presumably that difference is where your creative energy lives.
on one end of the spectrum, if you have the means, you can just pursue a never-ending path of "improvement" and waste half your life "fixing" your imperfections like a vapid OC trophy wife clone. on the other end you can live off the grid in the mountains making outsider art and never bathing, so far outside the norm that you are virtually inaccessible save for some NPR journalist who discovers you one day or something.
i think in LA that slippery slope toward fitting in is like a riptide current, so it totally makes sense good to stop and check yourself and your values. you don't want to get caught in the undertoe.
After spending 8th, 9th, 10th, AND 11th grade with braces, before they got small, my orthodontist gave me a mouth piece with the instruction to wear it 14 hours a day for the next two years. He made two big mistakes. Firstly, he did not bolt that f$@$*@# mouthpiece into my jaw bone and secondly he failed to tell my parents that he had given me a mouth piece. That little piece of orthodontal history is probably still under the front seat of my 1972 Ford Gran Tourino station wagon where I put it as soon as I left the office. Come to think of it, I felt the same way about getting rid of that station wagon as you felt about that tooth.
How is it that Salem's first car was our old wagon and mine was a kick ass 1979 Jeep Renegade Levi edition? Poor Brother, it's a wonder you did't slash all of my tires.
I have a genetic skin disorder on my hands and my feet, as do my three kids. It has, in many ways, shaped my life. I was badly teased as a kid about my hands-so many games that kids play involve holding hands and kids would refuse to hold mine.
My kids have gone through much of the same thing.
When we moved recently my 10 year old said "I've just gotten all of the kids in my school to not tease me, now I have to start again".
I am now at an age where there are some things that can be done that would probably "cure" the disorder.
I always thought that I wouldn't do it while my kids were young-the older two are in their 20's. How could I tell them that their hands were okay if I was going to change mine?
Now, I know that I couldn't do it. They are MY hands. They are part of who I am-the difference has been partially responsible for who I am as a human.
Maybe part of Ian was in the hiding the tooth, thinking about the tooth etc. It is surprising how much those things create us as humans. I know that my children and I are much more empathetic human beings for having to deal with being different.
Jackie
It's all right to cry, Williams. But don't worry, Toothy is in a better place now.
I had an eerily similar experience (minus the tears) involving teeth. Due to a wrestling mishap, one of my front teeth 'died' and it had to be replaced with a crown. I had a small (less than a millimeter) gap between my two front teeth, so when I was getting fitted for the crown, I asked my dentist if he could make the crown a bit bigger so it would close the gap, which he did.
Twenty years later, my gums have receeded a tad and the top of the crown is exposed and it's not the same white as the tooth so I have a small black band on the top of the tooth, which makes it look like I have bad oral hygiene, which is quite the opposite. I'm very self-conscious about it
I truly believe that the 'spirit' of the former gap between my two front teeth has smitten me for my vanity.
Funny, the more "perfect" celebrities get, the more I appreciate those like Kirsten Dunst, who steadfastly refuses to fix her snaggleteeth (that decision hasn't hurt her any, either). But in my own mouth, where lots of construction has been done, I have an issue that's similar to Ken's--a root-canaled front tooth and its porcelain laminate are darker than the tooth next door--and I, too, am very self-conscious about it. I'd like to have it fixed, but it'll cost me more dental work and money, and I've had so much done that isn't for cosmetic purposes that I'm leery of having a procedure just to satisfy my vanity. In other words, if it still chews, don't fix it. Still, it BUGS me when I look in the mirror. Strange, that some of the things that bother us on ourselves the most are ones we don't even see regularly. Maybe that's part of the problem.
I love my lower middle tooth that sits out in front of the others. It is me. When I eat cheese I can tell objectively that is me eating the cheese and the same me that ate cheese when I was nine. I'd like to give you comfort but that would require me denying my lower middle tooth.
I have a unique lower bite like you Alan. My three year old son has the same bite. Wouldn't change it for the world.
you probably think this song is about you
(I kid, I kid)
I've had the same sort of thing happen to me but the other way round. I've recently had all four wisdom teeth removed and one very badly decayed tooth at the front of my mouth. I was always concious of if but never thought that it caused any problem, until I had it removed, I'm left with a gap but it does not look as bad as a rotten tooth. I feel like a different person, I spoke to the oral surgeon and told him I also have stopped clenching my teeth, a problem he told me was called bruxism. Many people have this and one of the causes can be oral problems or problems with self esteem due to unsightly teeth! I nolonger wake up with my jaw clamped shut or feeling irratable, it's great.