Every kid in the county has the same orthodontist.
It's the only piece of 'community' we really all share; this isn't a small town. I'm sure there are other orthodontists around, but you never hear about them. You just assume everyone has this one thing in common. Like how there's only one downtown, only one bike shop, only one dome-shaped cathedral.
This orthodontist office is an extremely peculiar place, as far as orthodontist offices go. I only just realized this today. I've been going there since my sister got braces like four years ago, but it always just seemed normal.
It isn't. Not anymore.
The first time you go in, it doesn't seem all that strange. America's Funniest Home Videos on the televisions, strange little sculptures scattered here and there around the waiting room. Some photographs on the walls of the doctor with patients, teeth newly straightened. It's no big deal the first time you see him, the orthodontist, in some sort of strangely colored silk shirt, a shadowy beard as if his wife had forgotten to remind him to shave for a few days. Looking just a little off. Maybe just having a bad week or something.
You don't think too hard about it the first time, when it's just your sister getting her teeth tied together.
Years go by. You get your own braces.
And every visit, AFV still plays, on every single television. The televisions multiply. The photographs sprawl, you wonder if there is room enough on the walls for all the sets of straightened teeth, and you realize the rows and rows of patients are like a timeline and you wonder exactly how long this doctor has been doing this. You realize he never really shaves. And it's not even that he grows a beard from it, a nice, purposeful-looking, working-man beard, it just always looks like an accident. Forgotten and neglected. Like if depression were a beard instead of a clinical condition. Every shirt he wears is silk or striped or rainbow-tinted or polka-dotted. Anything you would see in a thrift store and pick up just to laugh at, he's wearing it.
It gets worse.
The sculptures multiply. I heard his wife makes them, it's the only explanation as to why there are close to one hundred paper-mache monsters crammed in the small building of dentist chairs and televisions. Strange, ugly, uncomfortable sea monsters of bright neon green and purple and pink and blue, with wide mouths and comical teeth, creepy frog fingers and wires hanging them from the ceilings, from the walls, they multiply. The monsters. They are everywhere. As if some sick artist decided to make a statement, something to comfort the kids who are about to be made ugly, telling them, hey, it's okay. You know why? You're all ugly anyway!
And it's true, each of the thousands of photographs proves it. Each kid looks just a little more proud of themselves, arm around a man in a depressed-looking beard and silk shirt, teeth straight, but still awkward. Still uncomfortable. Still sweaty or pimply or slouchy or nervous. As if the braces had not only straightened their teeth, but had left a permanent dent in their self-esteem, something not regained with the braces' removal. They take something from you, braces. It's in the eyes. All the eyes. Not just the monster eyes, the photograph eyes too, sprawling from the walls onto the ceiling, every square inch, eyes and names and dates.
It gets worse. The televisions. The home videos. The same host, same host, same host, you know he's done laughing by now, this is a lifetime of the same slapstick fall and lack of catch. Same torture. Same torture. Same torture. It's in the eyes, in his eyes, he's tired, he's sick, he ages eons with each show, it's only a matter of time before he straps a bomb to himself on live television. But then there is the question of time in the boxes. The people, they all look so old, so ancient. The show itself is old. Has it gotten cancelled yet? Do people still take home videos? Are they still alive?
It's almost like the televisions are stuck in a time warp, where each episode is older than the last. Time moves backwards through film quality. Slow, monotonous, repetitive. A kid is falling. There's another kid falling. Another kid falling. Another dog falling. Another mom falling. Another kid falling, kid falling, kid falling, your palms are sweating and you don't know why the audience is smiling when the child is crying and the people in the waiting room chuckle to themselves and then cough and feel ashamed.
Oh, and the sculptures, you know some nurse is going to hit her head on them one day. They crawl the place at night, you can tell. Small, palm-sized ones, tissue-box-sized, child-sized, bicycle-sized. They occupy every foot of the place, floor to ceiling. Huge plastic eyes and wire fingers with circular, colored discs at the tips, lips wide and curled in inhuman expression; constant, static, locked in time. Watching. They move somewhere, you know they move, you know they can't stay locked up here forever like the AFV movies and the photographs and the doctor, they are wild things with snaggled mouths and teeth and fingers and there are no windows. It's a trap. A cage. The sea monsters are trapped and they growl like a dentist chair. They rip each other's teeth out.
But then of course you know you are just being paranoid, and the beard can't help being depressed, it just feels like maybe it's taken a turn for the worst and needs to be locked up in a white-paneled room because maybe this life is too much to bear, maybe it didn't want to live in a room locked in time and AFV and sea monsters and silk shirts and ugly teenagers in and out and in and out and maybe the beard just wants to stay in bed for a few years until someone kind comes along and drills a hole through its head.
The beard seems to have more personality than the man who wears the silk shirts.
It is then, right when the nurse with the mask over her nose pushes the button where the seat goes whirrrrrrr and leans back ever so slowly, right when she asks you, "How are you, Shady?" you realize the only thing you know for certain is that you are not an okay person and this is not an okay place to be. You are one of the sea monsters now, one of the cats on the TV, and you will not be smiling when they take the photograph if they ever let you out again. But you say, "Good, how are you?" and then you surrender your mouth.
It's okay to tell him, when the orthodontist asks, and your mouth is already held open with all the stuff inside, cotton and fingers and metal things and whatnot, making speech impossible. When he asks, "How are you?" you look him in the eyes and say clearly, "I would like to bleed, sir," and he laughs at his own stupid question. The photographs stare and the sea monsters stare and the television laughs because someone fell out of a boat again, someone fell out of a boat.
A monster fell out of a boat in an orthodontist's office and I really hope I am not the only one who saw it.
It's the only piece of 'community' we really all share; this isn't a small town. I'm sure there are other orthodontists around, but you never hear about them. You just assume everyone has this one thing in common. Like how there's only one downtown, only one bike shop, only one dome-shaped cathedral.
This orthodontist office is an extremely peculiar place, as far as orthodontist offices go. I only just realized this today. I've been going there since my sister got braces like four years ago, but it always just seemed normal.
It isn't. Not anymore.
The first time you go in, it doesn't seem all that strange. America's Funniest Home Videos on the televisions, strange little sculptures scattered here and there around the waiting room. Some photographs on the walls of the doctor with patients, teeth newly straightened. It's no big deal the first time you see him, the orthodontist, in some sort of strangely colored silk shirt, a shadowy beard as if his wife had forgotten to remind him to shave for a few days. Looking just a little off. Maybe just having a bad week or something.
You don't think too hard about it the first time, when it's just your sister getting her teeth tied together.
Years go by. You get your own braces.
And every visit, AFV still plays, on every single television. The televisions multiply. The photographs sprawl, you wonder if there is room enough on the walls for all the sets of straightened teeth, and you realize the rows and rows of patients are like a timeline and you wonder exactly how long this doctor has been doing this. You realize he never really shaves. And it's not even that he grows a beard from it, a nice, purposeful-looking, working-man beard, it just always looks like an accident. Forgotten and neglected. Like if depression were a beard instead of a clinical condition. Every shirt he wears is silk or striped or rainbow-tinted or polka-dotted. Anything you would see in a thrift store and pick up just to laugh at, he's wearing it.
It gets worse.
The sculptures multiply. I heard his wife makes them, it's the only explanation as to why there are close to one hundred paper-mache monsters crammed in the small building of dentist chairs and televisions. Strange, ugly, uncomfortable sea monsters of bright neon green and purple and pink and blue, with wide mouths and comical teeth, creepy frog fingers and wires hanging them from the ceilings, from the walls, they multiply. The monsters. They are everywhere. As if some sick artist decided to make a statement, something to comfort the kids who are about to be made ugly, telling them, hey, it's okay. You know why? You're all ugly anyway!
And it's true, each of the thousands of photographs proves it. Each kid looks just a little more proud of themselves, arm around a man in a depressed-looking beard and silk shirt, teeth straight, but still awkward. Still uncomfortable. Still sweaty or pimply or slouchy or nervous. As if the braces had not only straightened their teeth, but had left a permanent dent in their self-esteem, something not regained with the braces' removal. They take something from you, braces. It's in the eyes. All the eyes. Not just the monster eyes, the photograph eyes too, sprawling from the walls onto the ceiling, every square inch, eyes and names and dates.
It gets worse. The televisions. The home videos. The same host, same host, same host, you know he's done laughing by now, this is a lifetime of the same slapstick fall and lack of catch. Same torture. Same torture. Same torture. It's in the eyes, in his eyes, he's tired, he's sick, he ages eons with each show, it's only a matter of time before he straps a bomb to himself on live television. But then there is the question of time in the boxes. The people, they all look so old, so ancient. The show itself is old. Has it gotten cancelled yet? Do people still take home videos? Are they still alive?
It's almost like the televisions are stuck in a time warp, where each episode is older than the last. Time moves backwards through film quality. Slow, monotonous, repetitive. A kid is falling. There's another kid falling. Another kid falling. Another dog falling. Another mom falling. Another kid falling, kid falling, kid falling, your palms are sweating and you don't know why the audience is smiling when the child is crying and the people in the waiting room chuckle to themselves and then cough and feel ashamed.
Oh, and the sculptures, you know some nurse is going to hit her head on them one day. They crawl the place at night, you can tell. Small, palm-sized ones, tissue-box-sized, child-sized, bicycle-sized. They occupy every foot of the place, floor to ceiling. Huge plastic eyes and wire fingers with circular, colored discs at the tips, lips wide and curled in inhuman expression; constant, static, locked in time. Watching. They move somewhere, you know they move, you know they can't stay locked up here forever like the AFV movies and the photographs and the doctor, they are wild things with snaggled mouths and teeth and fingers and there are no windows. It's a trap. A cage. The sea monsters are trapped and they growl like a dentist chair. They rip each other's teeth out.
But then of course you know you are just being paranoid, and the beard can't help being depressed, it just feels like maybe it's taken a turn for the worst and needs to be locked up in a white-paneled room because maybe this life is too much to bear, maybe it didn't want to live in a room locked in time and AFV and sea monsters and silk shirts and ugly teenagers in and out and in and out and maybe the beard just wants to stay in bed for a few years until someone kind comes along and drills a hole through its head.
The beard seems to have more personality than the man who wears the silk shirts.
It is then, right when the nurse with the mask over her nose pushes the button where the seat goes whirrrrrrr and leans back ever so slowly, right when she asks you, "How are you, Shady?" you realize the only thing you know for certain is that you are not an okay person and this is not an okay place to be. You are one of the sea monsters now, one of the cats on the TV, and you will not be smiling when they take the photograph if they ever let you out again. But you say, "Good, how are you?" and then you surrender your mouth.
It's okay to tell him, when the orthodontist asks, and your mouth is already held open with all the stuff inside, cotton and fingers and metal things and whatnot, making speech impossible. When he asks, "How are you?" you look him in the eyes and say clearly, "I would like to bleed, sir," and he laughs at his own stupid question. The photographs stare and the sea monsters stare and the television laughs because someone fell out of a boat again, someone fell out of a boat.
A monster fell out of a boat in an orthodontist's office and I really hope I am not the only one who saw it.
I like you. And your blog. But maybe not your orthodontists beard. But eveything else about you I like.
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