Dead Letter Dept.

I never wore braces. Maybe that’s obvious. I went to an orthodontist recently, because my jaw felt funny and the TMJ doctor suggested I see this other doctor and hoo-boy, the thing I learned through all this was I should have been an orthodontist. I should have seen the dollar signs adding up as he swabbed vaseline all over my lips (and beard- gross) for the plastic mouth spreader in preparation of a 3D scan. Anything 3D still costs extra. What can you do? It was cool to see what it would look like if I could shrink down and live in my own mouth. Several thousand dollars later, I got a spiral bound book with recommendations on adult braces and various contraptions that I can insert into my defective mouth to help make it less horrendous.

The weirdest part by far, was seeing my own skeleton. The good doctor velcroed my head into place, I was urged not to move and they took a 360 degree scan of my head. Then they showed it to me. Eessh. You know those online quizzes where they tell you how you’re going to die and what date and all that? This was worse. This was seeing your own self as nothing but a misshapen sack of fat held up by brittle, crunching bones. The same bones as everyone else. I tried to look at my skull and see something special about it, but there’s nothing special about it. I wanted to spot that thing that made it an exceptionally me kind of skull. But it’s just a skull. You can imagine it stuck into the walls of the catacombs or thrown into a heap after some disaster or poor management event at the funeral home.

Anyway – I had sifted through all my grandparents letters and photos this past weekend, and I guess I’ve just been too engaged in the ghost world, reading dead thoughts, tracing old lineages into the ether, that seeing my own deathly visage was a little too much. Gazing into the empty eye sockets of what I’ll look like when all is said and done spooked me. And now I’m writing this. Trying to think about podcasts, and ways to not drink as much, and how to get into comedy festivals, but then my mind fixes on how I’m just a skull like everyone else. It’s hard to think about the future. Really all I can think about is my double chin in the x-ray.

Also. Adult braces? No way. No. Way.
YAY SUMMER!!