May 25, 2007
[Typing this in again; Blue Gravity shut off register_globals, which the BF back-end depended on (hey, I'd never written PHP before). After a quick fix to bring things in line with Not Being Stupid, this time it should stick.]
It's come up in conversations before that I used to have braces on my teeth. This was back in the sixth grade, so the ol' metal-mouth didn't get me picked on. At least, no more than the buck teeth I'd had before.
When I first started going to the orthodontist they took casts of my teeth to determine a strategy for straightening things out. They also gave me a "souvenir" cast that showed the front of my mouth. When I was cleaning out the storage locker back in Akron last year I found the old cast.
I just now got around to taking pictures of the thing. Hence the "mental backlog" part of the program.
Front view. Hey, aren't people supposed to have four incisors on the top?
Three-quarter view. Oh, there they are. Behind the middle two. Yes, my mouth really was that screwed up.
Side view. Now you can see just how far the front teeth stuck out -- I couldn't really close my mouth over them. Assuming I'm remembering correctly, and interpreting the jargon right, my two front teeth were 10 millimeters (a little less than half an inch) forward of where they should have been.
I wore the braces from the winter of sixth grade (1987-88) through the beginning of my freshman year of high school (1990). I wore a removable retainer on my upper teeth until my sophomore year of college; the non-removable retainer on the lower teeth didn't come out until I graduated from college.
Things have moved around a little bit since then, but I can still close my mouth so I think I'm OK.
