My first appointment after “The Beginning”

Get in, endure, get out–this is the mind set of most young people when they enter the orthodontist’s office. I don’t honestly know what I was thinking when I reached the door. I had been thoroughly warned about the upcoming event.

“Oh yeah, it’s a great time, you’ll love it. They tighten them like crap and you shall survive only by asprin. Looks like it’s back to soup for you, babe. You will also love the nurse ladies, they are the ones who do the tightening. They don’t care how you feel, sometimes they will put the wire in backwards and that hurts twice as much, or they might forget to cut off the wire and it rips open your cheek.”

I think it will be a pleasant experience.

I open the door, climb the steps, and enter the room. For such a great paying job, they have a crappy building. I sign in, my picture pops up (which I hate) and I confirm that “Yes, that is a picture of Charita Lewis.” The wait was not as long as I thought (or hoped) it would be.

The door of HELL opened and my name was called (incorrectly, I might add). I walked back and entered the torture chamber.

I sat in the chair and listened the nurse ladies (witches is a more appropriate name) converse about their love lives. I think that most of them are married, for I see rings on fingers and sappy pictures of them with their husbands and kids. One girl, I believe, is living with her mother and/or her boyfriend. Then the conversation took a turn to pedicures and the dead skin on the bottom of one’s foot. Then, they asked me what I thought about it. I mumbled a lame reply and smiled. I sat in the room, just sitting mind you, listening to their petty conversation for a full twenty minutes.

I had broken a bracket and it needed mending. If this was not so, I don’t think that I would have had to see Dr. Ortho that day. The most awkward thing about the orthodontist is having one’s head between the doctor’s legs–very, very awkward. Why does the orthodontist try to carry a conversation with his patient? It isn’t as though they can talk with his hands in their mouth anyway. Also, why is it that at my orthodontist there are many many female nurses, all seemingly under the age of thirty, working with one man over forty? (Makes me very curious).

He fixed my bracket, and I got a power chain. It was basically a pain free experience. I don’t understand what the big deal is. My mouth didn’t even hurt the next day.