Irony

I was lucky in some ways. My teeth were pretty straight. The only real problem was that I had a very noticeable gap between my two front teeth. This bothered me, but since we didn't have orthodontic insurance, it was decided that a space between the two front teeth wasn't worth the investment for braces. I lived with that decision, but was still self-conscious about the gap.

When I was fifteen my friend, Julie, got braces. I'm not sure who came up with the idea, but she gave me some of her bands and I began my own self-administered orthodontic program. I began wearing a band around the two front teeth. It was a painful process, but slowly my two teeth came together and I had a straight, un-gapped smile I was pretty proud of.

The problem was that within a few weeks of removing the band, my teeth began to shift back to their original position. Back came the band. I went through this process a couple of painful times. One day, while wearing the bands, my baby brother reared back, as babies sometimes do, and hit me in the mouth with his head. I felt like those two teeth were going to drop right out of their sockets. The pain was awful. I decided at that moment that if my teeth weren't going to stay put, it wasn't worth the hassle and the agony.

A little over a year ago, I was flossing my teeth and realized that my two front teeth had come together. No braces. No bands. But somehow they now touched. My teeth looked straight and spaceless. All I'd ever had to do was wait a few decades and the problem was solved.

Then last fall, on the front page of MSN I found this. Now a space between the teeth is considered beautiful, even desired. A whole crew of gap-toothed beauties are walking the runways and starring in movies.

And my space is gone.