One of my pals from The Onion sent out a heartfelt social
media post about the powerlessness of watching his baby girl suffer from
bronchitis in the hospital. I’d link you to it, but I think it’s probably
breaking unwritten social media privacy laws. Regardless, it broke my heart to
read of his baby’s pain and his helplessness to do anything for her.
Thankfully, we’ve been extraordinarily lucky that we haven’t
had to experience anything even remotely close to his nightmare. Unless you
count watching Luca get his mouth expander fixed.
A little hint for all you mouth expander patients out there.
If you yank on your mouth expander constantly, it will fall out. It was up to
me to accompany Luca to the ortho to get it put back in. But not before attempting
in vain to eliminate the horrible smell from months of poor hygiene. It was a
smell you could chew. A rhino’s anus was a plate of warm cookies in comparison.
We arrived at the ortho and they immediately gave him the 3rd
degree. What did you do? Were you eating candy? Or popcorn? Tell us you weren’t
eating popcorn. Please tell us you weren’t dumb enough to eat popcorn. I covered
for him. It just fell out. Honest. Looked like poor orthodontia if you ask me.
After scolding me for being a big fat liar, they set to work
on shoving the mouth expander back into Luca’s face. Remember that scene from “A
Clockwork Orange” where they force Malcom McDowell’s eyeballs open with those
little pokey things? Luca’s experience was nothing like that. But it was still
a powerful scene.
It was uncomfortable, though. They took turns stuffing both
their hands into his little mouth. Pliers were used. The entire time, Luca sat
with his feet rapidly twitting, as if he was typing out Morse code. “Dot dot dot…dad…dot
dot dot…we escape at dawn…dot dot dot.” His hands also shot out from his chest
in little sad palsied shapes. As if he was playing a grotesque piano, or was
the Emperor from Star Wars zapping Luke Skywalker.
I was proud of him for not screaming bloody murder. I still felt
awful. I wanted to shove the orthodontist aside, gather Luca in my arms and
run. But I just sat there staring at my hands. To add insult to injury, his
ortho has a strict no phone rule.
When his torture was done, they scolded me again for not cranking
his mouth expander enough last month and I thanked them for their time.
As we walked outside, I told Luca he could have a treat for
being so brave. He asked for a Subway sandwich. It was 8:45am, so I said of
course.
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