As of today, I’m a 31-year-old man with braces.  I’ll have metal in my teeth for at least 20 months, and if today was any indication, they’re going to be long ones.  To start, my first attempt at eating this afternoon turned out to be somewhat ill-advised:  I went into the cafeteria looking for something non-crunchy, and settled on spaghetti.  By the time I was done I had enough food stuck in my teeth to feed a small African country.  I’ll have to work on my eating technique, I guess.

I wish I could say this morning’s trip to the orthodontist was uneventful, but it wasn’t.  There was some problem with the cement used to glue the braces to my teeth, and the brackets on the upper row kept popping off.  Eventually they gave up, took off the entire top row and started over.  “Just think of this as a preview of what we’ll be doing two years from now!”  Ha.  “Doctor, do we charge extra for this service?”  Ha ha.  Funny.  Seriously, what makes people think they should be comedians when their only audience is stuck partially-inverted on a chair with his or her mouth clamped open?

The orthodontist himself did all the work the second time around, leading to jokes throughout the office that it was good for him to get some practice and stay fresh.  In all, my appointment went well over an hour longer than expected, leading to a number of fire drills back at the office.

Who knows.  Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to work at all.  Having removed the food for Gambia by simply rinsing after lunch, I headed off to brush my teeth and instead of removing more food took out a couple brackets.  And so it was back to the orthodontist, leaving the day pretty much wasted.

I had oatmeal for dinner, and I suppose it’ll take me a few more weeks to learn how to eat with these things.  It’s spectacular timing, really, considering Thanksgiving is Thursday.  It’ll be interesting to see how that goes.