*'Linda's Birthday'*

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*

Never tease the daughter of an orthodontist

*

Linda was a nice girl to see, dark brown hair, blue eyes and today was
her fourteenth birthday and had no idea what she would get as present
for her birthday. Although she was just fourteen, she already had braces
for two and a half years, thus she started when she was eleven. Her
father had installed them, both her parents were orthodontist and had
their own practice and her mother also did jaw surgery. Everybody always
teased Linda at school, she had no friends at all. The kids with braces
teased her because her parents made them metal-mouths and the others
teased her because she had braces. She also had a deep overbite.

Linda woke up early that morning because she was very curious what to
get for her birthday, her parents and her two little sisters whom were
much younger than her, respectively seven and nine, they didn’t have
braces yet, because they were to young. And they just couldn’t
understand what the metal was doing in her mouth and kept asking her
again and again and sometimes Linda became sick of explaining it time
after time, although her parents were orthodontists they refused to tell
Linda’s little sisters. Linda always made them cry by saying they would
get it too in the near future. In the middle of the table stood a square
box wrapped in gift paper, Linda’s birthday present. She quickly removed
the paper and opened the box, her mouth fell wide open, "WOW!!! It is
the new virtual reality movement headgear for my computer". She took a
closer look at it while taking it out of the box, it had blue elastic
straps, that had to be the head-cap for the VR gear, then there was a
big plastic plate with iron wires and smaller plastic plates attached to
it, that should be the gamepad, the smaller plastic plates, were the
buttons, but there was also an iron bow with hooks attached to the big
plastic plate, maybe it was to steer.

"Indeed it is a headgear, but it has nothing to do with computers, it’s
an orthodontic device and from now on you have to wear it for twenty
four hours a day for the next five years, normally it’s sixteen hours a
day, but I know you won’t cooperate, so I’ll fix it in".

"Ok, I know you want to test all the orthodontic devices on your own
daughter, braces are alright, but how can you settle me up with this
horse bridle. I’m already teased by every kid in the school, the
brace-faces because you made them metal-mouths and the other kids
because I have braces".

"You were enthusiastic when you thought it was a computer headgear and
would wear it, so I don’t see the difference, so put it on now, I’ll
help you dad said".

Here dad took the plastic thing with the iron wires and the bow attached
to it and inserted the thing into Linda’s mouth, she almost had to gag
because her mouth was full of plastic. The big plastic in her palatal,
mounted on her upper jaw, the little plastic plates pushing against her
lower front teeth, every time she closed her mouth or chewed, to push
her lower jaw forward, the bow with the hooks went along the corners of
her mouth and along her cheeks. The blue elastic cap was placed over the
back of her head, from each side of the head-cap was a light blue satin
strap that went along her cheeks and were hooked to the hooks of the
bow, she immediately felt a strong force on her upper jaw, which was
pulled up and backwards. The satin straps were almost five centimeters
wide and covered her whole cheeks. Tears were in her eyes, what a great
birthday present, not. And then the birthday cake came in, but she
couldn’t eat it with the apparatus in her mouth, although she kept
trying. She tried to remove the big thing from her mouth, but she
couldn’t, it was fixed in by her own father, who always said he loved
her daughters, how could she believe that. The only thing she was glad
at was that it was Saturday and she had two more days before her first
day at school in horse bridle. But the weekend went quick…



*

The first day in class as horse

*

Today was Linda’s first day as a horse at school and she was late
because she had some problems with brushing her teeth and combing her
hair with the new device in her mouth and on her head. She opened the
door of the classroom, all the kids were already there, but Linda
couldn’t believe what to see. All her classmates, twenty-five in total
were in headgear, three with just a neck-strap, seven with a high-pull
cap and fifteen with both connected with a big C-shaped plastic piece
with holes in front of their ears, the ones with the C-shaped things all
had double bows, one for the upper jaw and one for the lower. The kids
with the combination headgears were the ones who didn’t have braces at
all before. She could see the kids with the combinations had all their
teeth covered completely in metal and had other bows, with big
fishhooks. Linda was glad, she hadn’t to be embarrassed by being the
only kid in horse bridle, but there was something more, Linda just had
an inconspicuous headgear, she just had navy straps and a iron bow. But
all the other kids had the most conspicuous bows and straps, every kid
in another color. The bows had a special color coating. The straps and
bows had the most possible conspicuous colors, like red, yellow, blue,
purple, green and many, many more. Some kids also had appliances in
their mouths that were much worse than Linda’s, she could see because
some appliances were so big they couldn’t even close their mouth
completely. Now she understood why her father worked the whole Sunday,
normally he never worked on Sundays, he said he had to do administrative
work.

When she came home, Linda talked about it with her parents. "We didn’t
want to embarrass you by being the only kid with headgear, so we geared
all the kids in your class yesterday, and they needed it, if they didn’t
need it, it would be irresponsible to put children in headgear when they
don’t need it, the kids without braces were the worst, that’s why
they’ve got Interlandi headgears with J-hooks, I mean the headgears with
both neck- and head-straps and the big C’s.



*

The second geared day

*

Linda went to school again, her teeth were becoming sore after a few
days in headgear and so didn’t sleep well last night. All the other kids
kept coming to Linda, not to tease her but to beg her parents to release
their headgears and Linda kept saying it wasn’t her decision and even
didn’t tell her parents to gear all the other kids in her class. The
bell rang it was lunchtime.

In the lunchroom Linda couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw the four
teaser-sisters, that’s how Linda called them because they were the worst
girls from the whole school. They were two twin-pairs, the one twin-pair
was a year older than the other one, but they were all in the same
class, because the two oldest girls didn’t make it last school year,
they weren’t in Linda’s class. Christine and Marisa, the oldest twin
pair both had ocean blue foam-pads on their cheeks, there went a bent
iron bar with many hooks form cheek to cheek, in the middle of the bent
bar a second bar went up and leant against their noses at eye-height, of
course with a foam pad, colored red, which covered their noses
completely. On all their upper teeth were metal bands with hooks, the
hooks on the bar from cheek to cheek and the hooks on their upper teeth
were connected with iron springs. It looked like they had
spring-mattresses in front of their mouth. But that was not all on their
lower teeth they didn’t have any braces, but just bands with tubes on
their back-molars with fixed headgear with neck-strap attached to it. So
they had a kind of facemask for their upper teeth and cervical headgear
for their lower teeth, Linda made the conclusion their upper teeth were
too far back and their lower teeth too far forward.

The younger twin pair, Petra and Joan had another device, also a
facemask, but they had a big red foam-pads, which covered their
foreheads completely. On their chins they had a purple chin-caps.
Between their foreheads and chin two bent iron wires were connected, one
at each side of their face, just in front of their eyes, which made them
look squint. In front of their mouths there was a horizontal bar with
hooks, between the two other bars. There were about ten springs attached
to the hooks, but there was something strange, on each jaw was a plastic
retainer that went over their teeth, hooks were on the front of the
retainers. The springs on the right side of the bar were attached to the
left side of the lower retainer and the springs on the left side of the
bar were attached to the right side of the upper retainer. All the iron
wires of the masks of the four girls had a yellow coating. Tears were in
their eyes, something Linda never saw, because they were the big teasers
themselves.

When she came home she asked her dad about the two twin-pairs. He told
Linda that Christine and Marisa had these devices because their lower
jaws were too far forward and their upper jaws too far backward, just as
Linda concluded earlier. Her father also told the handicap was so bad he
needed to install extra-force coil-springs to their upper teeth and
extra-force headgear to their lower teeth. But Linda couldn’t conclude
why the other twin-pair had another device, but her father told her.
They have a even worse handicap their jaws grew in diagonal directions,
their upper jaws more forward at the right and their lower jaws more
forward at the left. He said he needed the retainers to pull the jaws
straight completely, otherwise he would pull just one side of the jaws
forward and it would even get worse. He estimated it would take two and
a half years to pull their jaws straight. Because this treatment pulled
their teeth forward, while they were already too far forward (it was
impossible to pull their jaws straight with headgears) they needed
Interlandi-headgears after this treatment for another seven and a half
years. Christine and Marisa had an estimated treatment time of five
years, just as Linda, while Joan and Petra would be geared for at least
10 years.