Reflection of a Drilling

Reflecting, that is what I am doing right now, this morning.  Listening to our daughter's beautiful music before getting ready to go to the dentist for my 6 month cleaning.  I remember being so scared when I was a child of the dentist.  I used to absolutely white-knuckle the arm of the chair, much like I used to do when flying.  What brought about this fear I ask myself.  Momma took we three kid for our regular check ups and it wasn't really scary.  Mother made sure we had our teeth taken care of.  Unfortunately we had horrible teeth, like my father and his side of the family.  Momma wanted to make sure they weren't so bad that we were spitting out teeth that were rotten, like my Daddy and one of his sisters.  My aunt had such bad teeth that she had dentures before she was in her 20's.  That is BAD!  But I guess back then they didn't know that much about mouth care.  Back to the white knuckling thing.  When you are child the scary thing about the dentist are the smells and the sound of that dang drill.  It can really give a sense of unease.  

I have spent a lot of time in that chair with nearly every tooth in the back, up and down filled with various kinds of fillings, be it gold, silver or even porcelain crowns.  Cross my fingers I never have to have a root canal!  Of we three siblings the worst, crooked teeth, were mine.  I had fangs and an overlapping mess, plus a horrible cross-bite going on.  My parents could not afford braces in the day but my maternal grandparents were there to help.  They paid $1,000 to have my teeth straightened.  For three long years I was in two different kinds of retainers that the dentist tweeked and tightened every 4-6 weeks.  It also took that 3 years to pay the entire $1,000 off for my parents and grandparents but they knew that I was in dire need of the treatment.  I have to tell you though that first night, with those things in my mouth, I have never EVER had a headache that bad in my life.  I was in horrible pain.  I was then supposed to take the things (upper and lowers) out to brush my teeth but I could not get them back in and had to walk to the dentist at lunch time from school to have him put it back.  Braces were relatively new in my school so I was kind of an oddity then.  One doofus insisted on calling me snaggle-tooth for a good part of my 7th grade.  Don't know what happened to him to this day.  Having the retainers in the 7th grade was horrible for a girl who had absolutely NO self-esteem.  Plus I had just gotten over having the broken leg thing in 6th grade and out nearly 6 months of that school year plus we were then attending junior high.  Let's just say my 7th grade year, the only thing good to come out of that year was meeting my best friend then, Sharon.  In fact most of the junior high years (7-9) were a blur.  Junior high was mostly a horrible time for me as probably it is for most kiddos.  Let's see, hormones (periods), braces/retainers, teasers, boys, girls, friends...oh the list can go on.  I think those ages are the most important and the hardest on a kid.  It truly was for me.