I Dream of Teeth

I had my first braces related dream last night. I’ve heard of people having nightmares about braces/jaw surgery and I am sure as my own surgery day creeps closer my subconscious will filter in some orthodontic influences, but this was my first orthodontic dream. It wasn’t even bad all things considered. Two weeks ago my bottom front teeth were aching pretty badly. The morning after the worst day of pain I noticed a small visible gap between the two bottom front teeth, which to me explained the pain. So in last night’s dream, I didn’t have pain but I did have crazy spaces between all my teeth. It looked like when a small child gets their first teeth and they are all spaced apart. I guess I must be okay with the “it will get worse before it gets better” part of major orthodontic treatment because I didn’t wake up panicked or disoriented (you know, like I do when I dream of work ha ha).

My husband’s family are all going to see my braces for the first time this weekend so I had better be prepared to tell my “why-did-you-get-braces-when-your-teeth-were-already-straight” story a bunch of times. Ten bucks says his grandmother makes some comment about the cost.

And speaking of people noticing my braces, my friend’s 4 year old saw them for the first time last weekend and he was pretty curious about them. Explaining what braces are and what they were doing in my mouth to a 4 year old was interesting… he doesn’t care that they make me look a bit different; he just didn’t know what they are. So, he looked in my mouth, touched the brackets and wires and was generally a curious kid. I think he understood what they are to a degree, but he’s 4 and we went from talking about what the braces were doing in my mouth, to running away from imaginary crocodiles. To be honest, he is my favourite person I’ve explained them to so far. I didn’t tell him about the surgery, I figure he doesn’t need to know about that until the time comes. Then, I am sure I will need help explaining why my teeth are banded together but I bet as long as he knows I will be “better” at some point; he’ll be okay with that too. My friend on the other hand, gets squeamish and visibly uncomfortable when I mention the surgery so it might be up to someone else to explain it to his little guy without gagging. I am not eager to think about the actual methodology of the surgery, but so long as I don’t analyze it too much I should be okay!