Say Cheese!

Next time you see me, I'll have a new smile.

In second grade, after we had moved to Riverview, I was at a sleep-over at our church with the Pioneer Club program which First Moncton ran. Most of the time was spent in the church gym. Jillian, Katie, and I were, as little girls do, skipping rope, Jillian and Katie on either end, myself in the middle. Being seven or eight years old, I was not equipped with the mind I have now, and so I did not realize the ludicrousy of not wearing sneakers while jumping rope on a gym floor. Instead, I had my simply my socks on. As anyone knows, I am not very stable on my feet with industrial shoes on, let alone socks that allow easy 'surfing' upon sleek surfaces.

As all little girls know, skipping cannot go on forever, and so we eventually stopped, perhaps to give someone else a turn at the jumping. I stood on the rope. Katie, in a way any seven or eight year old child would find hilarious, pulled the rope out from under me.

KAPLUNK. Flat on my face I fell. I was not badly hurt, I probably had the wind knocked out of me.

I stood up. Should I cry? Did it hurt? Something had to happen, but I think I feel alright.

Someone pointed to the ground and gasped. People rushed towards me. "Laura, are you okay? Oh my goodness!" I had no idea why everyone was looking towards the ground.

I looked to where they were all pointing. There was something wrong with the floor. I looked closer. No, there was something on the floor.

"Laura, your teeth, what happened?" Pieces of my two front teeth were laying on the off white floor. I started crying. I picked them up, hoping that it could be fixed, scared of what my parents would say. I moved my tongue to the front of my mouth and ran it against my teeth. That made me cry harder, because there was a space which should not have been there. I could feel the air moving into and out of my mouth as I breathed, or moved. When something is out of place, it is unavoidably evident, and this is probably what caused me the most pain. Dad must have been in his office or in a meeting, or I called him. I remember sitting in his office, on one of his rose coloured LazyBoys and crying. The time we spent at the church seemed like ages to me, I do not recall what took so long, but eventually we were at the hospital, sitting in the waiting room.

I missed out on the entire night, but I was most heart broken about the dog show. Apparently, trainers came in and dogs did tricks, policemen brought in their dogs to sniff out things. And I was sitting on my Daddy's lap in outpatients, waiting for a nurse to see me. After what seemed like hours, a nurse looked at me and told me there was nothing I could do. I had to see a dentist. It was late at night, and our dentist was on vacation, so Dad got in touch with the on-call dentist and I had an appointment for the next day or soon after.

This was not the only adventure my teeth brought me on. Every once in a while for years they would break on me. I would be eating candy, or Amy and I would be wrestling. Eventually the dentist put pins in the back of my teeth to keep them from falling apart.

I've been told that my smile is one of my best features, and yet in the middle of my smile is the remnants of chipped teeth, getting discoloured and fading as the years go on.

In middle school, I broke them once more, and some friends started calling me Chippy. This was a nickname that I hated, and it would hurt more than anything. In early high school, I was explaining the teeth story,

"Oh, so that's what happened" one of my newer friends exclaimed. "I always thought you just didn't brush your teeth or something.

Because of this, my teeth have always been a confidence issue for me. That and my eyes. The cliche of beauty is always "blonde hair and blue eyes" of which I have neither. Instead, I have what has been affectionately referred to as barf-coloured eyes. Of course, I am essentially over both of these traumatizing events; feel extremely self conscious over my smile and my eyes, however the situation is still tender. The day my friend broke my heart and told me about what 'colour' my eyes were, my youth pastor said to me, "Laura, the man you marry is going to find your eyes beautiful. He will think ________ (left intentionally blank, because I cannot go marrying the first person who says this to me, especially if it is common knowledge in the first place)."

Today I will soon find myself leaving work and on my way back into Quispamsis to go to my dentist appointment. Unlike my boyfriend, I do not have dentophobia, however the experience is never my most pleasant. (My hunky dentist alleviates some of the stress.) Today, they are sautering my two front teeth, and rebuilding them, hopefully matching the colour and clearing up all the bacteria which is forming between the real and the fake teeth, possibly causing cavities. My dentist's wish was for me to get crowns (or something) on the teeth to cover them up. It would look as if I did not have a chip at all, and it would be the end of all my worries with them, however the insurance will not cover it. So I will be forced to endure the removing and rebuilding of my teeth once every few years until I no longer have any more of my own teeth left.

I would be much more inclined to go to the dentist if I could read or write while getting the work done. Instead, I'll be staring up at a Dora the Explorer poster on the ceiling.