Cover Your Mouth When You Blog

Orthodontia and Other Life Goals

As a young girl growing up in Southeast Kansas, the one thing I dreamed of most was to one day work in a tall, shiny office building in which I would have a large wooden desk of my own, behind which I would always be found attired in flattering suit jackets and heels that clicked across the lobby's marble floor as I rushed to important meetings. Aside from making it Mary-Tyler-Moore-hat-flinging style in the big city, the other aspiration that tickled my budding mind was not the hope for a sparkling wedding, handsome husband, green lawn or children to dress up in darling little booties. More than any of these common dreams of young girls, I dreamt of orthodontia. Oh, how I longed for braces. Thanks to my father, whose straight teeth I inherited, I was told at the tender age of 11 that this dream would never be. "The alignment of your teeth is near perfect," Dr. Cleverly had said, leaning over me in a paper mask, "You're a lucky girl." Lucky my ass, Dr. Dreamcrusher, I'd fumed internally, glaring at the Garfield poster affixed to the ceiling above the dentist's chair.

My older sister had been fortunate enough to get our mother's teeth, a zig-zag of lower incisors and even a molar growing behind another molar on the upper right side. She not only got braces, but later retainers to wear at night and at one point in between, a contraption called a bionater, which may have gone the way of the lobotomy since the late 1980s. I observed her oral hygiene rituals with teeth-gnashing envy. Globs of wax mashed against sharp bracket edges and a cleansing process of picking, brushing and rinsing with special liquids and instruments garnered from monthly dentist visits. When she showed up one day with a blue retainer with silver glitter embedded in the plastic palate, I almost lost it.

I played dress up in my sister's retainer whenever I got a chance, flashing metal through a coy smile at myself in the bathroom mirror, "Oh what? My retainer? Oh yes, I just got it. Thank you," until our mother caught me one day and said that if I broke that $800 piece of plastic and wire, she'd have to sell my Huffy to replace it. But so unyielding was my desire to have uncomfortable hunks of metal bound to my teeth that I took to stretching out paper clips and wearing them across the upper and lower arches of my mouth. When the sharp end of my makeshift corrective device punctured my gums during a sprint down the stairs to catch the ringing telephone one Saturday evening, I shoved a ball of cotton between my cheek and the wound, tossed the paper clips into the bathroom trash can and acquiesced. Some dreams are not meant to be.

I mentioned to a coworker recently, massaging my temples as our heels clicked across the marble floor of the lobby of our office building, that I'd been waking up with headaches in the last few months. "Does your jaw hurt?" she asked in the elevator.

"It does actually."

"You're probably grinding at night."

"Grinding?"

"Your teeth."

"Really?"

"It's stress-related. My husband's a grinder."

I shared the symptoms with my dentist a few days later and he said "grinder" as if were as common a nighttime behavior as heavy breathing. "Are you under a lot of stress at work?" he asked.

Other than the occasional snap of memory that straightens my spine as I tinker my way around another Excel chart at work, and sends the sudden and panicked realization pulsing into my cerebellum that, as a girl, when I dreamt of a large, wooden desk in a shiny office building, I was sitting behind it typing out a story - that in my dream, I was a writer? "No, not really."

"Are you under any other kind of stress?"

Other than the creeping recognition that the things I didn't dream of as a girl - the wedding, the husband, the healthy lawn and children - might be just as difficult to accomplish? "No, not really."

"Well, we're going to fit you for a night guard. It's a plastic device that you'll wear over your top teeth at night to keep you from grinding them against your bottom teeth. My assistant'll be in to fit you in a minute."

A plastic device that I'll wear over my teeth at night? A twinge of excitement. I guess some dreams just take their sweet time in coming.

Another One Just Like the Other One

When you’ve woken up four mornings in a row at the exact same time to a cataract-colored sky, drizzling rain, and are forced to choose the day’s attire from a work-appropriate selection of seven sweaters, two turtlenecks, three pair of pants and a few skirts (a slender professional wardrobe because you refuse to wear iron-dependent garments and despise spending money on boring work clothes) and ride the same train where you see those same three women wearing the exact same, beige, plaid, Burberry scarf, on the fourth morning you may start to wonder: Why have you spent $250 on a beige, plaid scarf so common, so ordinary, that two other women who live within walking distance of the Rockwell brown line stop and choose to board the third car from the front would own the exact same scarf? It’s not an especially pretty scarf. It’s certainly not interesting. It seems that you could just wear a button that says “I could spend $250 on a scarf if I wanted to” and then go buy five $50 scarves of varying colors and patterns that someone might actually enjoy looking at while sitting behind you on the train.

And when the train arrives at your stop and you take the everyday path down the alley and across Franklin Avenue to your office building and you get a mug of coffee and begin work on the projects from yesterday, which resemble significantly the projects from two days ago, which resemble significantly the projects from two years ago and you decide to take a break from charts and graphs and get a glimpse at what those living a more exotic lifestyle are up to that day, you might log onto the People Magazine website. And while you click through the “Star Tracks” photos of the day, you may begin to wonder:

I know that Ashlee Simpson got her nose chiseled, so I understand why she now looks like Jessica Simpson, but why does she also look like Drew Barrymore and sometimes a bit like Sara Michelle Gellar?

Ashlee, Drew, Ashlee Again, Sara Michelle:

And why does Nicole Richie now look like Mary-Kate Olsen and also a little bit like Mischa Barton and also a smidge like Hillary Duff?

Nicole, Mary-Kate, Mischa, Hillary:

And why does Hillary Duff now look like a blonde Shannon Doherty?

Hillary Again, Shannon:

And when 5 o’clock arrives and you retrace your steps out of the building and across Franklin Avenue and through the alley and onto the train platform and see a different woman waiting for the brown line with the exact same Burberry scarf, you might think to yourself, There goes another one just like the other one, and realize that it also applies to your day. Or maybe that’s just me.

Where's Haley Joel Osment When You Need Him?

Okay, now I'm starting to worry.

First it was the man in the dark pin-striped suit smelling faintly of Windex who plunked down in the seat beside me on the train this morning, nudging my elbow with his computer bag causing coffee to slosh out of my travel mug and drizzle into my sleeve. When I reacted with an exaggerated sigh (translation: I'm not aggressive enough to sneer "excuse you" but definitely passive-aggressive enough to exhale loudly and bug my eyes in your general direction until you realize what a total douchebag you are), he didn't even blink. It's like he doesn't even see me sitting here, I thought, sucking the coffee from the cuff of my blouse.

Then it was Glen the mailroom guy, who apparently mistaking a professional office building for his personal yoga studio, is constantly traipsing the hallways barefoot, occasionally taking a wide stance mid-conversation and swiveling his outstreched arms in a nice trunk twist. "Morning, Glen," I said with a small flap of the hand as I stepped off the elevator. He glided past me onto the elevator without so much as a grunt. Hm, must be in a bad mood, I thought.

Then there was Sandra in the breakroom when I asked if there was any skim milk left. She walked wordlessly to the trashcan, discarded the empty carton and retreated slowly toward the door, watching that her coffee didn't top over onto the carpet. Guess that's a no; Jesus everyone's acting like an a-hole today.

But now, just a few moments ago in the women's restroom, I said hello to Margie, the coworker with the hair that resembles a Russian fur hat and who always wants to chat near the vending machine for at least 20 minutes and is oblivious to commonly employed conversation-ending cues, such as slowly backing away or saying "well, okay, lots of work to do" or shouting "OH MY GOD YOUR HAIR'S ON FIRE" turning on one's heel and sprinting in the opposite direction. She was scrubbing her hands over the sink and didn't so much as raise her eyes to acknowledge me. What the f**k is with everyone today? I thought. Oh my God, maybe I'm being fired. Oh Jesus. They found out that I blog on company time and I'm totally being fired today and no one knows what to say to me. But then what about the guy on the train? He wouldn't know I was being fired. Neither would the mail guy. So what the hell's up with everybody?

Then I realized that maybe everyone is fine. Maybe it's me. Maybe, last night in bed when I couldn't tell if the scratching noise was the upstairs neighbors getting it on or a masked killer picking the lock to my front door I should have trusted my initial instincts and enacted the Rapist Escape Plan. I should have thrown some pants on, grabbed my cellphone and the spare car key I keep on the nightstand for just such an emergency, shimmied out the bedroom window, hustled down the back sidewalk, jumped in the Tercel and escaped while dialing 911. Rather than being "reasonable" and drifting back to sleep like every other night, I should have known that this was the Real Deal. But I didn't. I floated back to dreamland like a fool and was obviously murdered in my sleep. That must be what happened. And apparently my poor, downtrodden soul has become so accustomed to the crushing monotany of my daily routine that rather than flittering up to heaven, it rose at 6:30am, got in the shower, brushed it's teeth, grabbed a cafe au lait at Beans and Bagels and boarded the Brown Line to work. That is the only explanation I can conceive for everyone's complete disregard for my presence this morning. I'm only here in spirit.

Well, I guess my boss did come into my office around 10am to bitch for a half hour about the woman in her condo association who won't agree to a $10,000 special assessment to have the decks restained. But considering that this conversation has taken place everyday at approximately 10am for the past six months and considering that my boss seems as compelled to have this conversation on a daily basis as most people feel compelled to eat or drink, and seeing as my only contribution to this conversation is usually the occasional, "mm hmm" or "oh my" I fully expect that my boss would come into my office at 10am to bitch for a half hour about the woman in her condo association who won't agree to a $10,000 special assessment to have the decks restained even if I were actually dead in my bed at home and not ever notice that I wasn't here offering an unenthusiastic "mm hmm" at the appropriate moments. So that doesn't really prove anything.

Where is Haley Joel Osment when you need him? Oh, probably doing community service. I need to get him over here. Tell me, Haley Joel, do you still see dead people? And do dead people blog?