The new Grill

Yesterday was a milestone in the life of my budding adolescent. That age-old right of passage where we embark on cementing little pieces of metal on the front of all his teeth and begin the arduous and sometimes painful process of creating the perfect American smile. Yes, we Americans do place high value on the straightness of our teeth. There have been at least three times when we have been in foreign countries and met people who commented that they knew we were American before we even introduced ourselves. How? Cause of our straight and clean teeth.

Georgie headed to the Ortho yesterday morning at 9:00 and by 10:45 was completely outfitted with the tortuous brackets. Here is he with his last "before" smile...



Here is my favorite picture. I promised him that I wouldn't show this to anyone - - I lied. For those of you who know Georgie, you know that he has a big mouth. Not in the sense that he talks a lot, for those of you who know him also know he is a man of few words. His mouth is large in the sense that he will be the guy that we all knew in college who could actually either fit his entire fist or a can of beer in his mouth. Obviously, this little party trick is entirely genetic. As this photo shows, and as the ortho-technician pointed out, they didn't have any problem accessing any of George's teeth. Go figure.



And finally, the finished product. It's not nearly as glaring as I thought it would be. Given the square footage of Georgie's smile, I was practically certain that I was going to have to squint to avoid the brightness of the new rails. But, thanks to modern dentistry, it's a whole lot less metal than I had anticipated.



He ventured to school yesterday right after he had his requisite ice cream (even though his teeth didn't hurt). It took him about 30 minutes to brush and floss last night. Or, let me rephrase, it took him 15 minutes to brush and it took ME 15 minutes to floss. He has mitts for hands and he can't navigate the floss threader thingy. so I had to help him. I am hoping that he gets more proficient at the little floss threader thing, as I really don't want to spend the next two years flossing his teeth for him.

This morning he did have a lot of pain and asked for apple sauce for lunch. I suggested that taking a couple of aspirin might also help a little. You'd have thought I asked him if he wanted to take some heroin or something. The kid does not like to take medicine. But I finally convinced him that, thanks to the effectiveness of modern medicine, he actually didn't have to power through the pain. Aspirin would really work. He still can't swallow a pill, so the irony was that his painful mouth had to chew through the Motrin. This may just be the catalyst needed to get him to master the skill of pill swallowing.