"why you smiling, are your teeth hot."

“Choo choo”, “he can eat an apple through a tennis racket”, yeah I had heard them all by the age of 15 when I first got my braces, railway tracks running the full length of my ragged teeth, I had no option but to smile and I totally despised it.

My teeth now show the remnants of a boy who battled to close his mouth when falling from his bicycle or skateboard, capped teeth, cracked teeth and spaces left by pulled teeth.I had grown too many teeth, lucky me, and our dentist could not count, so my teeth pushed out my mouth as they fought a battle for supremacy.

At the age of 15 years old the Orthodontist had to pull 2 teeth from the top and bottom. Then over the next 3 years he slowly pulled, using the tracks, my teeth back into my mouth reducing these gaps.

Once a month I would have the pleasure of seeing him, even the missing of a day at school could not make me happy. Were he would tighten the wires by adding tiny bright coloured elastics, leaving me in pain for the entire weekend and reminding me that I looked like “Jaws” from the James Bond films.

It angered my father that I was so miserable about going there and why he was wasting all this money then. The embarrassment and pain had me wondering the same thing. What follow is stories of my extra large mouth full of teeth; how I have overcome my embarrassment and have grown stronger through these experiences and have found that smiling and laughing is the best remedy.