You know when you’re young and everyone seems to be doing the same thing but you’re not doing it so you feel left out? That was me, but with braces. From the age of twelve up until about 17, everyone around me had braces – all except for me. My Mum kept reminding me that I was blessed with good teeth and that I should be happy that I didn’t have to get braces. But instead of agreeing, for over five years I felt excluded and as if I was missing out.
Looking back now, it’s pretty funny. I was lucky that I didn’t need any sort of preventative dentistry and looking back on how much better I looked than everyone else in our school photos, it’s pretty laughable that I ever thought it was a problem. I guess it’s just a case of the grass is always greener on the other side. I also suffered greatly from FOMO as a young girl, so
the thought of me never getting to have the experience that other people were having really bothered me.
In reality, my parents were probably really happy that they had passed on their straight teeth genes onto me. It would have saved them fortunes in comparison to the other parents who had to fork out thousands of dollars for orthodontics.
I remember that my classmates and friends would all get to leave class early to go to their Bayside dentist appointments. All of these appointments would have been so expensive for their parents. You can imagine how jealous I was at this, though. My classmates always got to leave school and I never did. Little did I know that this was a massive drain on the financial resources of the parents and that I had done a very good thing for my parents by not having to leave school.
Here’s to not having had braces.