Brace Face.

This past week my sweet Attorney General went to his orthodontist appointment. "Why," you ask. Because my dear, sweet soul mate.......wait for it.....wait for it.....has braces.

It's a fact that we don't talk much about around here.

Here's another little fact for you: Several years ago we were trying out a new Sunday School class and as we were discussing something, I'm not sure what - probably the Bible, a man we had never met before spoke up. He had on braces. And I do declare, if I'm lying I'm dying, my husband whispered to me,

"That's it. We've tried this one. Moving on."

"Why? What's wrong with this class? They just started."

"That grown man is wearing braces. I cannot take anything a grown man says seriously why he is wearing braces, anymore than I can take him seriously for wearing that yellow cardigan."

We never went back.


And I'll be a monkey's uncle if four months later he wasn't wearing braces himself. See how God works, people? Don't get me wrong, He works in other ways, too. Good ways. Faithful ways. But also He'll get you sometimes just for making fun of Sunday School teachers.

It had been a pretty uneventful day. It was a Saturday, and it was before children, so I'm pretty sure there had been some napping, maybe a matinee, you know, all those things you get to do before kids. And there we sat, in Shane's Rib Shack and without warning my love bit down into a rib...

Which is really how the story should go. I mean, if the Attorney General had to lose a tooth he would prefer it go down in one of two ways: eating ribs or playing in the NBA. It was only logical that it be the rib thing.

So there we sat when he made a pretty aggressive bite, and out it came. It had been knocked out years earlier when he was in high school and there was some kind of aggression used on the court, yada yada yada, he's told me but I've never really listened to him, yada yada yada, he was a really good "baller", yada yada yada, I think his team won, yada yada yada, his coach put his tooth in milk and hauled him to the ER. There, that pretty much sums it up.

So it was just waiting for the day that some Shane's tasty ribs could bring it all to a sticky conclusion.

And within five days the man was wearing braces.

Did you get that? FIVE DAYS. Five days of him missing a front tooth. Which I believe is the time he started watching NASCAR, playing paintball and growing a beard. (I'm not typecasting people, I just callz 'em as I seez 'em.)

And it's been soooooooo long now. Like, four years I think. Which in braces years is quite a long time.

Four years of seeing those little bands fly across the room if he laughs too hard.

Four years of having to say, "yeah, you have a little bread stuck in there but it's not bad." And then having to turn your head for fear you'll throw-up.

And lest we forget, for years of...say it with me now...

HEAD GEAR.

That's right, folks. The Attorney General wore head gear. Which wouldn't have been so bad had he not been suffering from corpel tunnel syndrome at the very beginning of "bracic training" (play on words there, did you get that?). So every night I went to bed with him I felt like I was cheating with Robo-Cop. Those were good times, though. Almost every night we would wake up and play "find the head gear." That's a fun game. One of those where you look all over the room to find where your deep sleeping husband took off his head gear in the middle of the night and threw it; him never remebering a thing. It was so bizarre. Once we found it laying on top of the dresser, like he had gotten up puposely and put it there. Only he never remembered.

It's scary what you can do in your sleep and not remember the next day.

But now we've come to the part of the story where neither he nor I can take it another day. You just cannot be called The Attorney General and go to lunch meetings with bands on your teeth. I told him the other day, "Whenever you meet with prospective clients you know they're thinking, 'we really want him to be our attorney but not until he's at least expererienced prom.'" I try to make him feel better if I can.

And so we are petitioning his orthodontist (even saying that word makes me feel like I am back in the 9th grade and my best friend, Ang, wants to try out for flag line if her orthodontist appt. doens't interfere with the tryouts) to remove them - NOW.

Dr. F says "it's not time." I say that you can only tell a man "you got a little something right here..." so many times before you go completely immune to it and send him to serve communion at church with half a donut hole between inscissors 4 and 5.

Here is a picture of a "brace face." (I don't really like that term by the way, I use it becasue I am easily swayed by popular opinion and labels.) It is not his, for he would hunt me down and kill me in my sleep and swear that he didn't remember doing it. He firmly believes he could represent himself in my death and get away with it. I believe him, as well.

And yes, that is Prince Harry when he was, like, 12.

I've always wanted to die in my sleep.