Dental Damn: a sad story about a boy’s braces case
“Oh man, not again! Aaron Sherman moaned. It was the third time this week he had woken up with an empty mouth.
He was trying to be better about wearing his retainer, but it was just so hard. After four excruciating years of tightening wires and avoiding taffy, it was unbelievable he had to occasionally wear another mold.
His teeth shifted, so the piece was slightly uncomfortable and tasted weird, making it almost impossible to muster the strength to wear it. His recent attempts to remedy this were in vain, since he somehow managed to remove it in his sleep.
Aaron woke up to a mouth that didn’t taste horribly — a signal something must have gone terribly wrong. He groggily rubbed his eyes and searched around for the misplaced remnants of his dental apparatus.
Eventually, he located both halves, the upper section residing on the pillow, and the bottom resting gently in the trashcan.
“Goddamn, how does this end up so far away? It’s like my mouth got hit with an oral tornado … which is totally what I call my trademark move for the ladies,” Sherman chuckled quietly to himself. .
He secretly wished someone was around to hear that; it was clever. Maybe he’d actually be able to use that line on a real girl if people knew just how witty he was.
He never even wanted braces — his teeth were fine before, with the exception of the one or two odd, snaggled teeth. However, his dentist had convinced him that without proper dental alignment he would live a life of crushing loneliness and would never rise above the position of “assistant janitor” — all part of the fledgling orthodontic program, “Scared Straight.”
The intervention had been a failure, as his already-low popularity plummeted once he joined the ranks of the metal-mouthed, and remained painfully stagnant ever since. Even in the two weeks of perfect teeth he maintained after removing his braces, not one person even smiled back at him on the bus or in the unisex bathroom.
Aaron washed his face and brushed his awful teeth to get his day started. He made his way downstairs, pulled his phone out to check the message, and with diverted attention he failed to see his cat lying on the steps. Aaron slipped on Mittens, causing him to fall down the stairs in a cacophony of thuds, hisses and curses.
He picked himself up slowly and brought his hand to his face to wipe the blood away—however, it seemed he had knocked every single one of his teeth out. “Dang,” Aaron thought. “At least dentures don’t need retainers.”
