Braces.

I told you either last month or the month before that I was going to get my braces off soon. Well, I got them off. Weeks and weeks ago, actually. I just forgot to make a formal post. It's odd. Before I got my braces off, I couldn't picture anything but having them on.

I had had braces since third grade; for as long as I could remember. Well, actually, that's a bit of a hyperbole- I can remember before that. In fact, I remember other traumatic experiences with orthodontics before that. For example,in second grade, I had an expander that I had to crank with a key. Although I already spoke with some weird form of accent/speech impediment (I'll probably talk about that later), the expander made it especially difficult for me to talk right. One day, the school was doing a fundraiser and provided breakfast on campus before school started to raise money. I didn't go, but when I walked into the classroom, my teacher (a particularly rude, sports oriented African American man who I hated) imitated me supposedly chewing on what he thought was food from the breakfast. In reality, I was just having difficulty speaking and I was heartbroken and embarassed.

Anyways, I could hardly remember NOT having braces. And now that I no longer have them, I can no longer picture HAVING them. I look in the mirror, and I don't see myself as braces free, I just see myself, which is the opposite of how I looked at other people who didn't need braces when I did. And I look at people with braces and I'm surprised to see them with metal brackets glistening on their pearly whites. Funny how my subconcious immediately reacts to my immediate situation. I automatically see myself as normal, even if that makes my past self abnormal.