Oral Weaponry

Ever since I was a teenager, dentists and oral hygienists have tsk-tsked themselves to near death over the state of my badly malocclused bite and crooked teeth. Finally, last March, sick to death myself of their yapping – and half believing as well their admonishments that if left untreated, said malocclusion and crooked bite would come back to haunt me in the form of gum disease, jaw pain, and possible tooth loss – I took the plunge, emptied the Shoe Fund, and got braces.

The process has been about as joyful as sticking needles in my eyes.

We won't mention the pain. Or that friends and relatives who haven't seen me in a while think I'm anorexic, never mind the fact that I haven't lost a single pound since this process began. What's happening is, the braces cause my lips and the lower facial skin surrounding them to stretch just so over all that metal so that I end up looking not like my former round-cheeked, cheery self but, rather, like Skeletor's cocaine-addled stupormodel cousin, Stanislava.

No, no, no, no, I have to tell people, I am eating. I mean, are you kidding me? Not even the removal of all four of my wisdom teeth at once prevented me from doing that. If I have to crush it with my elbows and snort it through my nostrils, believe me, I'll figure out a way to get it into my stomach.

So, yes, the entire process has sucked some major ass.

Until today. Today I discovered that I can do something that none of y'all unbraced people can do. And that is, make out of my mouth a totally cool, dead on accurate, super stealthy slingshot. See this tiny little rubber band and the way it links the Wilson Appliance along my upper molars with my bottom back teeth?



By day, this works to retard the movement of my front teeth so that my molars shift into position to create the Perfect Bite. By night, when un-attached from the back hook and instead stretched out to its full length and then released, it becomes quite an effective weapon of mass irritation. Like a spit ball, only with more sting. Finally, some fun.