Confessions

I got braces when I was 14, at the start of ninth grade. I was very excited about this, because I thought it meant that I was a "real" teenager. (I also got glasses the same year, and purposely picked out frames that were like Andrea's on 90210...true story. Obviously, I spent too much time reading Sweet Valley High and watching television as a pre-teen.)

So, braces. I wore these braces for almost the entire four years of high school. Thanks to my lovely overbite (which never got corrected, thank you very much Mr. Asshole Orthodontist), my front tooth, already missing a small chip on the backside due to an unfortunate altercation with a chair at the age of 12, bit down on the braces on my bottom teeth and an unsightly chip appeared in its bottom edge.

By my senior year, I had had enough of these braces. I was already at least a year past the "you'll only need them for two years" point. I begged my mom to get them off of me. She relented, and had to sign a waiver at the orthodontist in order for them to be removed. I'm sure she promised not to sue the asshole doctor (once again, thanks for nothing, jerk, my teeth looked the same when the braces came off). As he removed my braces, and tsked, he filed down the chipped tooth "to even it out", and ever since, that tooth has appeared snaggly. I hate it. It's my number one detested facial flaw (next to my forehead chicken pox scars that you probably barely notice, but that look like moon craters to me, since I had to live through the embarrassing agony of having them since I was 10).

So, if you take my picture from beneath me (as in the above shot, taken by the 5 year old nephew), or from certain angles, you can see the resulting snaggly tooth. And it horrifies me. I actually have lots of nightmares about my teeth, falling out, me pulling them out, etc. I need to get over this.