Snaggletooth

David on the phone to his Tooth Jockey

Up until I was in my twenties I had straight teeth. Not perfect, but straight. Then they Bowied. Just like David, two fangs from the side began to creep out from their rightful position and not in a cool of the moment Twilight or True Blood vampire kind of way, but in a Snaggletooth way. This has bugged me for a very long time. It has bugged my mother even more, who uses my graduation photo as a benchmark. “Your hair was so lovely that day” (au natural; undyed and un-ironed) , “Look how straight your teeth were in that photo”(she’s right, they were. What happened?) She stops short at saying that she’d prefer me to wear a gown and hold a scroll on a permanent basis. She blames our family dentist, The Tooth Jockey for the whole thing. “He should have been onto that.” Our family has a love/hate relationship with The Tooth Jockey. I’m sure when he sees my mother’s name in his appointment book he thinks about throwing a sickie.

I have broached the subject of my unhappiness of the two snaggleteeth on a couple of occasions with The Tooth Jockey, a man who, in having a new car outside his practice pretty much every time I go there, you’d think would be happy to use my insecurity and vanity for a down payment on the next one. But no. He says, “Well, they aren’t that bad. You’ve got ask yourself, how bothered are you?”

Truth is I AM bothered, but he has made me feel an idiot for even mentioning it, so I meekly demur and slope off feeling my snaggleteeth with my tongue and check them in my rear view mirror on the way home trying to convince myself that he’s right; they aren’t that bad. I tell myself that if shit teeth were good enough for Freddie Mercury then they are good enough for me.

Years later I find I’m cringing when I see photos of me smiling. My teeth are squint and I hate them. Time goes on and I find myself not smiling so much when I see a camera trained on me. I am tight lipped like a Muppet (but not the muppet Doctor Teeth).

So, I decide to do something about it and last week I made an appointment to see about getting something called an Inman Aligner, which a man on the radio says can straighten your teeth in three months and is practically invisible. The nearest dentist that is certified is in Edinburgh, 120 miles away from my home. I take the plunge, I tell people, I Twitter about it, I proclaim my smile sorted by Christmas. People make noises about my teeth not being "that bad" (except my mum, who uses the occasion to badmouth The Tooth Jockey once more).

My appointment is with a young pretender tooth jockey called David who looks uncannily like the comedian Jimmy Carr. David/Jimmy looks at my gnashers, he takes photos of them and then he sits me down alongside him at the computer. He does not tell me “they’re not that bad”. They are bad, and he wants to tell me just how bad things really are. David/Jimmy, in fact, tells me things that I didn’t even realise were wrong with how my smile looks. I’m squint, I’m not symmetrical, my teeth aren't in the right part of my mouth, my teeth are the wrong size, they are too close together, and one, in particular, is singled out as a complete design affront to God and the world He created.

I think he’s either trying to convince me how shocking things are so that I’ll definitely go for the miracle brace in some kind of clever sales ruse, or he is, in fact, the actual Jimmy Carr and gets a kick out of insulting people like he does on that show he hosts where no vulnerable section of society is too vulnerable to be the butt of his jokes. Turns out it’s neither. David/Jimmy is working up to break the terrible news to me; my teeth are too much for the miracle brace. “There’s too much that needs done. The Inman Aligner is not for you. It wouldn’t work. You’ll need full orthodontic treatment plus a possible four veneers if you were to completely correct everything. Go back to your dentist and tell him that’s what you want.”

Five minutes and fifty quid later I’m on the street with tears welling up.

I’m off to the Tooth Jockey next week. I may take my Mum with me.

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