Take it without tears
Somewhere in one of the hodgepodge boxes in the back room, in one of the dilapidated cardboard containers stuffed with what remains of my childhood and my foolish teenage self, is a small ornamental box, a box within a box. In the smaller box is a strange collection of ephemera: Loudon the sheltie dog’s puppy teeth, a tangle of bobby pins, a small card from my high school boyfriend D where he wrote “I love you,” and an orthodontic "appliance" called a rapid palate expander.
My orthodontist hammered the rapid palate expander into my upper mouth in front of an audience. Every procedure was a performance. The three chairs for patients in varying states of pain, their mouths agape, were in a row in front of two similar chairs for waiting teenagers, which were all part of a large common room. You either got a front row seat while you waited for your own torture or you were only a moan away from it all.
Waiting patients tried not to stare, and when I was in the chair, drooling as they made a mold of my teeth, wincing as the cruel dental hygienist twisted the wires, eyes watering as Dr. Tjersland wielded the rubber mallet, I pretended there were no boys in the room. I closed my eyes and thought of the fish in cylindrical tanks in front of me or quietly hummed Duran Duran songs.
According to one orthodontist’s web site, the rapid palate extender – or RPE – works by “simply activating the expander through turning a screw in the center, with a special key . . . [placing] gradual outward pressure … on the left and right halves of the upper jaw. This pressure causes an increased amount of bone to grow between the right and left halves of the jaw, ultimately resulting in an increased width.” Simple. Painful with each turn of the screw. Food often got stuck in between the roof of my mouth and the RPE and I’d hack it out like a cat rids itself of a furball, complete with raspy sound effects.
Eventually, the thing was pulled out in a public removal, pried off with pliers or some other piece of handyman equipment adapted for exquisitely sensitive mouths. With more room to grow, my teeth could now be jacketed in metal and connected by rubber band. It was progress. My tongue explored its new cave with a growing sense of freedom, anticipated the taste of metal and blood, excited about the straightened teeth to come.
I kept the device as a reminder of what doctors do to unsuspecting children, as a record of public stoicism. Someday I will point to my now crooked teeth and will show my son the torture device in a stern warning to follow doctor's orders, to keep turning the screw and accepting the metal, to wear the retainer.
From the prompt "Boxes."
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. I expanded this one a bit.
Image by mag3737.