the saga continues

"Have a seat," they always say, "and let us take a look at what we've got going on here."

They lean the chair back and tell you to open wide. They stick the little mirrored circle in your mouth to take a closer look. They're faces scrunch as they peer into an abyss littered with white stalactites.

"Hmm, OK, well we've got a little problem here."

That's the way it has always seemed to go for me. Genetics blessed me with a pretty rotten set of teeth. They're not actually rotten, just in the wrong places. I've been to orthodontists, dentists and oral surgeons since I was about 11 years old. And it hasn't ended yet.

My tally: Two rounds of braces totaling 5 years, 13 tooth extractions including both front teeth and one adult tooth, and a round of oral surgery to expose a tooth on its side so it could be righted by braces. Two years from now, we'll be able to add two additional extractions, another set of braces and another bout of oral surgery to that list.

I'm not complaining, well, maybe I am a little bit, but I just find it completely insane that some kids never even wear braces and I've dealt with all this. Perhaps orthodontia needs kids like me to keep them in business. For every braceless face, there's the girl with a lifetime subscription.

I'm currently facing another four months of braces at the fabulous age of 22. These orthodontic nightmares will most likely accompany me through my job search and probably into the work place. I'm not exactly vain, sure I wax my eyebrows and I've had my nails done, but I like to look nice, and I think first impressions are really important. I look somewhere between 16 and 18 anyway, add braces and I'm done for.

But it's inevitable. It has to be done. As I was whining to my friend yesterday he told me, take a few days, be pissed off about it and then move on. He's always been good at stuff like that -- for the most part he knows how to let things slide off of him. I don't see him wearing braces at 22, but you know.

So here they come. Ready or not. The self-esteem will probably take a momentary hit, but I'm pretty sure this is just another lesson in endurance. It's about learning to live with what's put in front of me. I've been thinking a lot about fate recently -- chock it up to the fact that I'm graduating, but I actually think about it a lot. Maybe we're meant to endure certain hardships, they help us grow, they help us learn, they shape who we are.

I know, I know. They're just braces. But to me, they're a little more than that. I know it could always be worse. I know that, believe me, I know that. But I can't help but feel a little duped by my gene pool. To me, they're just another notch on a time line of annoyance in a mouth that's always been a problem. The saga continues.