Working at Wrinkle City, I met some pretty fascinating men and women. One of my all-time favorites was a vivacious woman who won two Olympic medals for swimming and hadn’t missed a day in the pool in over five decades. We pitched her to Corporate Marketing to use in our ads for the great independent lifestyle we offered. They agreed...until the close-up of her very crooked teeth put her out of Marketing medal contention. The only picture used showed her in the pool. At a distance. With her teeth photoshopped to look better.
Having crooked teeth only works if you’re a British actor. Hugh Grant gets away with it. So did Matthew Lewis as the Harry Potter character Neville Longbottom. And even Kiera Knightly doesn’t get any grief from Johnny Depp for her mouth of crowded teeth since he has a snaggletooth of his own.
My childhood dentist use to say that he couldn’t make any money off of my parents since my teeth were so straight. Straight, but soft. The poor old guy shouldn’t have retired because he could’ve made a fortune off of me now. In the past year alone, I had two teeth with childhood silver fillings deteriorate, which led to root canals which led to crowns. I could have gone to Europe for a couple of weeks for that. Or for sure he could have.
Wingman had much better teeth than me, and use to flip out when I came home with dental bills every six months. One year right before Christmas, I broke a prominent almost-front-tooth and the oral surgeon proposed a necessary implant to the tune of $4500. When I told Wingman the cost, I was shocked that he actually endorsed it...until he realized that I was talking about a tooth and not the only thing men associate with implants: breast augmentation. From the bone graft, to the titanium post, to the final tooth screw-in, I had to live with his snide comments that if I had gone for breast implants, no one would have noticed the gaping hole in my mouth.
For the past few years, I’ve noticed that, much like the pool lady at Wrinkle City, my bottom teeth have started to look like a whiter shade of Stonehenge. Grinding my teeth from stress may have had something to do with it. After all, Wingman's death and Superstorm Sandy within three months didn’t help. Losing a few jobs through the recession certainly added to that. But my dentist assured me that it’s “natural aging,” and offered a $4000 opportunity to give me back my 1980's smile with clear aligners. If Wingman's company stock had been worth what he/we thought we'd get when it finally sold, I'd have the aligners and probably the implants he envisioned. Instead, I went to Ireland, where I drank, sang and danced without caring what my smile or any other part of me looked like.
Last month, a TV commercial caught my eye while I was making my New Years resolutions. In between vowing to get up to enjoy more sunrises and deciding not to go on any more diets, I made an appointment at a pop-up shop in a local drug store. There, this perky little Millennial bitch who said “Wow, I’ve never had anyone as old as you want to do this” signed me up for aligners. About two weeks later, they arrived in the mail, and for the last three weeks I have lisped my way into my future perfect smile.
My resolutions included more trips which don't include passports, and at least for this year, my smile is my vacation. But next year don't expect to see any photos of beautiful waterfalls or sunsets or beaches. Because every picture is going to show nothing but teeth. Mine.
