My Mini Extreme Makeover

This story starts when I was 8, so brace yourself.

My neighbor, Kenny Kokoszka, "inherited" his Dad's 2 aluminum flying saucers. On a bright, starry winter night, we decided to test them out.

Behind my house was the perfect sledding hill. Kenny & I each took a sled. I sat, folding my legs Indian-style. With my hands balled up into fists inside my homemade mittens, I pushed off, bouncing several feet until the sled began to slowly creep down the incline on its own. Within moments, the sled, true to its name, was flying down the hillside in the dark. I wrapped my hands tightly in the olive-green canvas handles that were bolted to the saucer. Somewhere near the middle of the hill, the saucer began to spin in circles and I closed my eyes. I wasn't sure if the joy I was experiencing escaped my body in howling laughter or if sheer speed and wind stole my breath and any ability to make any sound.

At the bottom of the hill, the sled shot out across a field rutted by ski-doo tracks and frozen boot prints. The spinning stopped and hitting one last bump, I was dumped face forward into the snow. I lay laughing, rocking back and forth to free my arm that was pinned below me. My legs were still folded with the saucer resting against my rear. I must have looked like a chianti bottle on it's side.

"I'm gonna stay like this to show Kenny how I landed," I thought to myself, still laughing and blinking the snow out of my eyes. Within seconds, I heard Kenny's sled approach from the rear. His sled followed my path exactly.

The impact was startling. The sleds made a sickening sound as they collided. As his hit mine, mine was sent flying forward yet again, but my body wooly garments were stuck velcro to the hard, dry snow. My sled flew forward and hit me before I could wipe the smile off my face. That was a bizarre blessing, I'm sure. It protected my lips and face from damaging scars. But the clang; there was a dead-on hit.

We managed to untangle ourselves and I sat upright, stunned. I felt my face. It felt fine. My lips; there was no blood, no swelling. And yet there was an odd sensation I could not identify. I ran my tongue across my teeth. Something was wrong with them. I did it again. My left front tooth was fine. My right front tooth... was now suddenly very sharp and sloped at an odd angle from the bottom left side up to the right.

It was then that I started crying. For years, my Mom had stressed how important it was to take good care of your adult teeth because you can't get more, no second chances. As a pre-teen, she'd had Maine's substandard dental care and had her 4 top front teeth removed and had been given a partial plate. (She'd kill me to know I'm revealing this.) She lamented the loss of her teeth and that she'd been given no choice.

I got on all fours, took my mittens off and started running my hand over the snow. I had to find it. When I explained to Kenny what had happened, he did the same. Trying to find part of a tooth on a snow-covered field on even a starry night in Maine is still like trying to find a specific blade of grass on a golf course. It ain't happenin'.

We gave up and trudged up the hill, dejected. I wasn't so much in pain, but I cried hysterically because I had to explain this to my parents. I was going to be ugly for the rest of my life.

My mother loves to tell this part of the story. We walked into the kitchen door, and when asked what happened, I cried out, "We was practicin' the agony of defeat and I lost my tooth!" ABC Wide World of Sports was pretty big at the time, and all I could picture was the skier wiping out and careening down a moutainside on his back.

That night, Dr. Cassidy (who my Grandmother often erred and referred to as Dr. Cavity) opened his dental office and went to work. The immediate option wasn't great. He filed the tooth down so that it was no longer pointy or sloping. It was, however, definitely not as long as the other front tooth. For the next 3 or 4 years, my school pictures show me with a big smile, and one tooth obviously shorter than the other. A little warrior, I was not self-concious about my battle injury from the hill and aluminum sleds. I don't recall ever using those particular sleds again, but I was not defeated by the hill.

When I was 12, Dr. Cassidy finished fixing my tooth. He was a truly gifted dentist who had returned to his hometown after his schooling to open his practice . We had been waiting for my teeth to finish growing, and then he used a new procedure where he applied a large amount of bonding to my tooth and carefully shaped it to match its twin. I remember watching the blue light that sets the bonding enter my mouth and wishing I could watch the rest of the procedure, too.

For nearly a good 20 years, Dr. Cassidy's handiwork stood the test of time. It has only slowly worn down. With age, it has also started to yellow. Now, as an adult, I am self concious about my smile. The little warrior has retired. The little warrior has been replaced.

I hesitate to call it vanity. You need to understand the path my life has taken. From about the time I felt like the little warrior onward, I struggled with my weight. In high school, I joined Weight Watchers 3 times. Twice I was very successful. Once I went away to college, I ballooned. I was enormous. I have my excuses, good ones, but we needn't go into them now. On through my 20's my weight rose and fell within a 15 lb range. But when you weigh approximately 230, that doesn't make much difference.

When I hit age 31, my doctor sent me back to Weight Watchers. The older, obese members of my family were all developing Diabetes, and I was told I had to quit fooling around with it, or I would likely get it.

I did the work. A year and a half later, I felt like I had stolen Wonder Woman's body. Not that I am a ravish beauty, but I was suddenly ABLE to move and be active in ways that would have left me wheezing on the curb before. I hit a euphoric high and had an enormous amount of energy. I have stuck with it. Weight Watchers is a WAY OF LIFE, a lifestyle, not a diet. People ask me if I'm still doing Weight Watchers. The answer is: Yes. Of course. It wasn't a program that had a beginning and an end. It is taking good care of me! And the secret is, it's hard work to stay within the 5-8 lbs that I bobble in. But it's wicked easy staying below a weight that I don't want to be.

I have this new body that I love. I feel like I've been given a gift of having experienced life in 2 different bodies. Although the new and improved one is by no means perfect, it feels like a tremendous gift. Maybe it's that I suddenly feel so "close to perfect," I want my teeth to look natural. I feel like my teeth are glaringly wrong. Am I being vane? God, I hope not. I hate vane people. But I'm becoming more self-concious in pictures. I think I look like Mr. Ed, like my right lip is curling upward into a snort when it's not. It's just the bond has worn down. Now I feel like I LOOK like I'm from Maine! Let's hear it for the "who has the teeth" jokes.

I'm to be married next June. I'm cringing at the thoughts of the pictures from my wedding day. "And this is the bride, Mr. Ed ."

At my dental appointment here in Boston last week, I inquired about my choices. Unfortuneately, my dental insurance does not cover for veneers. The veneers would cost me $4,800. I'll tell you up front, I'm not that vain.

Once, on the Today show, I saw a story on a young woman who had racked up an enormous credit card debt on frivilous things, like shoes. She started a website or a blog where she asked for people to give her money to help her get rid of her debt. Apparently, she thought because she was a nice person that others would help her with her debt. You know what? I'll be damned but they did! Suppose I could do that? "Hey, everyone! I'm a good person. I've done the hard work. I'm physically fit. I'm nice. I've sacrificed so much to make legal marriage an option for me and my community. I want my mini-extreme makeover! Help me get rid of my Mr. Ed teeth and be beautiful for my wedding day." Ok, maybe "beautiful" is nothing I've ever strived for. How about sexy? "The bride wishes to be sexy on her wedding day!" Or maybe not even sexy, but not like Mr. Ed's twin sister.

Sue & I had some pals down to ptown with us for the weekend. Sue has been telling me for the longest time that I 'm fine, that I don't need to have the touch up done. But being my partner, her opinion on that matter... well, it just doesn't count. She's supposed to say that! Our pal Denise, on the other hand, is not required to humor or lie to me. She was completely opposed to me altering my smile. She said if I got the veneers, they wouldn't look natural or right. My smile suddenly would not be mine, it wouldn't be special. You gotta love Denise. She's got a way with words.

I may break down and do the much more affordable option of having the bonding built up again to see if I have more luck than last time. A 2nd application of bonding about 6 or 7 years ago lasted only several days before crumbling off. I was terrified it was going to crumble Dr. Cassidy's fine work, too, but luckily it didn't. But I'm definitely passing on the veneers, keeping in mind the wise words of Halle Berry:


"Before you go alter body, do some research and find out how many women have major life-threatening complications from nose jobs. Ask about how many nose jobs gone terribly wrong, and if you thought your face was wrong before, look what happens after. The more we start augmenting our bodies, the more and more we start to look alike, then nobody is special anymore. " Halle Berry

Ok, it's not a nose job, but the sentiment is the same!