been to the dentist—but since I'd been babysitting and doing other kids'
homework for cash, I resolved to save up until I could afford braces
myself. I had no idea how much they cost, so I approached the only girl
in my class who wore braces and, after complimenting her orthodontia,
casually asked how much it had set her folks back. When she said twelve
hundred dollars, I almost fell over. I was getting a dollar an hour to
babysit. I usually worked five or six hours a week, which meant that if I
saved every penny I earned, it would take about four years to raise the
money.
I decided to make my own braces. I went to the library and asked for a
book on orthodontia. The librarian looked at me kind of funny and said
she didn't have one, so I realized I'd have to figure things out as I went
along. The process involved some experimentation and several false
starts. At first I simply used a rubber band. Before going to bed, I would
stretch it all the way around the entire set of my upper teeth. The rubber
band was small but thick and had a good, tight fit. But it pressed down
uncomfortably on my tongue, and sometimes it would pop off during the
night and I'd wake up choking on it. Usually, however, it stayed on all
night, and in the morning my gums would be sore from the pressure on
my teeth.
That seemed like a promising sign, but I began to worry that instead of
pushing my front teeth in, the rubber band might be pulling my back
teeth forward. So I got some larger rubber bands and wore them around
my whole head, pressing against my front teeth. The problem with this
technique was that the rubber bands were tight—they had to be, to work
—so I'd wake up with headaches and deep red marks where the rubber
bands had dug into the sides of my face.
I needed more advanced technology. I bent a metal coat hanger into a
horseshoe shape to fit the back of my head. Then I curled the two ends
outward, so when the coat hanger was around my head, the ends angled
away from my face and formed hooks to hold the rubber band in place.