Getting braces removed calls for a William Wallace ‘Freedom’ shout

I sort of relived this week the scene in “Braveheart” where Mel Gibson’s William Wallace character has his intestines removed by his captors in hopes he’ll confess his sins, except I didn’t have my intestines removed, I wasn’t being tortured and nobody was trying to get me to confess my sins.


But I was lying down and I did have something extracted, and when it was done I wanted to yell “Freedom,” much like Wallace actually did do during the scene.

My moment of almost mirroring “Braveheart” took place Monday when the braces I’ve been wearing for the past year and a half were removed, returning freedom to my mouth.

Wearing braces for the past 18 months has been a chore. I’ve been limited in the foods I can eat, although I haven’t always followed some of those limitations as popcorn will never leave my diet.

Braces also occasionally hurt. When they shifted my teeth around, my lips and inner mouth often had to adjust to sharp edges piercing into their soft tissues, often making me whine to my wife. And she’ll admit that I’m usually pretty good about sucking up any pain and not complaining about it.

They also gave me trouble when I tried to pronounce certain big words. In a class at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, I often was faced with many big words, some containing many “s” sounds that often tangled with my braces. Fortunately my professor understood my difficulty, as she also had braces as an adult.

Adult braces are worth these costs, though, especially when you had a gap between your front teeth that could have fit the Titanic. I feared smiling in public, scared the draft coming from the gap as my mouth went in an upward motion would knock whomever I was smiling at down. That’s probably not a good way to meet someone.

My wife is now saying I can’t stop smiling, and that I look like the Cheshire Cat – devious and mischievous looking. I can understand, as I’m not quite sure how to smile properly yet. Right now my teeth-showing smile is a cross between Tom Cruise’s perfect smile and Charles Manson’s bug-eyed serial-killer smile. I’ll call it a Charles Cruise smile.

I’ll keep trying to get the Tom Cruise smile. I have the rest of my life to gladly practice.
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Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, Jan. 20, 2012.

Braces aren’t meant for adults who don’t like complications

Starting in July, eating became a complicated issue for me. It’s not because I developed a weird food allergy or that I’m on some sort of super diet in which I can only eat nonprocessed all-natural carbohydrates void of any Omega-3 fats. It’s because I got braces.


Braces, which are usually lovely gifts puberty gives to young preteens and teenagers, are not meant for adults, although many more adults are now getting them.

I decided to get them because I’ve got a gap in my front teeth large enough for the Titanic to pass through if it were still afloat. And that’s a comment on the size of the gap, not my head.

By getting braces, I figured I could get rid of the gap and also create equal spaces between all my teeth so flossing would be easier. I’ve never had an issue flossing between my gappy teeth, but getting between the tight ones has always been a semi-painful experience I avoided as much as possible.

This avoidance hasn’t been good to my teeth, nor was growing up in a family without health insurance where dentist visits were done because of necessity, not for preventive care. In my late 20s, root canals were practically a weekly experience as dentists attempted to save my teeth from my poor younger years.

They saved them quite nicely actually, allowing me to have the luxury of choosing to get braces to make them even better.

Once I decided to get braces, I thought my orthodontist would put them on, I’d wear them for a year or so, and then all would be good.

I wish. I spent six months receiving consultations, fittings, photography sessions for my teeth and other advice before the first actual brace was placed on any of my teeth.

Even then, the orthodontist only put the top set of braces on first. I’m glad he did, though, because it allowed me time to get used to the feeling of having a mouthful of metal.

At first, it didn’t hurt and didn’t seem to be an inconvenience. A day later, though, my opinion quickly changed. The braces were rubbing against my inner lip, cutting it up and making me want to rip my teeth out of my mouth. Eating was no longer an activity I liked, and smiling was not an option anymore.

My poor wife didn’t even want to be around me then, saying I was acting like a bear. I tried not to, but I think the metal was picking up radio signals that subliminally channeled messages to my brain to make me act that way.

To my surprise, a week later the braces no longer hurt. My inner lip calloused up and I learned how to chew in a way to avoid my braces.

But then I got braces put on my lower teeth, thus starting the pain process all over again.

Again, my mouth got used to them within a week, but now eating was much more complicated than when I just had upper braces. I couldn’t use my chewing techniques anymore, because a large part of it involved me using my lower teeth.

Eating is still complicated. I ate a sandwich the other day, thinking I had done so successfully. While I usually try to brush my teeth after eating, it’s not always possible.

When I can’t, I try my best to make sure food is not caught between the braces and my teeth. I thought I had done so in this instance, but when I got home, I discovered several chunks of sandwich right in open view. It was quite embarrassing.

I’m already counting down the days I’ll get these things off. Then my life won’t be so complicated.