A Funny, Relatable Braces Story

“Did you brush your teeth today? ‘Cause it doesn’t look like it.” As I sat there, flabbergasted, wondering how a child who was too short to reach over my desk found the guts to say something like that, I realized one thing. Kids have no filter.

To start my story off, there’s a couple things I have to explain. For one, I wear braces. They’re not the metal kind, they’re the white kind where the only color you can see is the color of my rubber bands. This means that some months my mouth is hot pink, on others it’s navy blue, and on some, it’s spinach green. Yeah, it doesn’t get much worse than spinach green. 

Another thing to note is that I have a job where I work with kids. While the majority of these kids fall into the upper elementary to middle school range, some of them are really young. Like 5 years old. Which means they say whatever comes to mind, whenever they want to. Most of the time, it makes for a really fun experience. Kids really know exactly what to say to get me snickering uncontrollably. But on the other hand, they also know what to say to get me to freeze in place.

On this particular day, I was eating a snack when a little 5 year old boy came up to me to ask a question. And upon seeing my teeth, a twisted array of bright green from my braces and yellow from my food, he probably thought my teeth were rotting away. 

So much for being a girl in her teens, I’ve already reached the age where kids think I’m an old crooked nosed witch with rotting teeth.