My Josie Geller Era

A while back, I made an appointment with a local orthodontist office. I have had jaw pain and clicking most of my life. I’m a night clencher and have had this pain in varying degrees since high school. Flash forward to today and I have my very first set of Invisalign trays, rubber bands, weird-looking bumps on some of my teeth, and a first-class lisp.

People often talk about mid-life crises in terms of doing wild things or buying expensive, silly things. But I don’t think crisis is an apt term. (Yes, I’m going to play the harp again.) It’s more like mid-life carpe diem. Finally, in mid-life there seems to be time and funds and a realization the exit is coming faster than we ever realized before. So what do we do? Play, because we spent so much time worrying about all the things all the time. We seek adventure and experience. And sometimes we have to parent our younger selves. Here I am at 47 looking for all of that–play, adventure and experience, and to parent my younger self.

When I was a teenager, I was told: “You have a nice smile. You don’t need braces.” As if the only reason to get braces was to resolve a cosmetic issue. Sure, esthetically, my teeth looked fine. But on one side of my mouth, the teeth sit right on top of each other, slowly grinding each other down while the other side sits as it should. When I clench, they’re off-axis and then my jaw hurts like fury. It didn’t look bad back then, so there must not have been a problem, right? I try not to hold anger because it’s not terribly useful at this point and I’m not sure it was within the capacity of either adult in my house growing up to address the underlying cause of why I clenched my teeth at night. That’s okay. I’ve dealt with it because I’m the grown-up now. And I can take care of the structural issues, too.

Here I am today reflecting on my teenage self and my present self. If you heard me speak today, you would think for all the world I was Josie “Grossie” Geller from Never Been Kissed, a cute little rom-com with Drew Barrymore. To be fair, it’s not a direct comparison. I didn’t get egg thrown at me in my prom dress. I had enough teasing and being made fun of to give me character, a sense of humor, and perhaps sand off some of my rougher edges. Hey, I even make sure my pant legs are long enough now. (Laugh with me.) And I have been kissed–thoroughly, exquisitely… Yet, there is this piece of me that will always feel like the awkward kid waiting to blossom, even at 47, and agonize at the prospect of being made fun of.

Well, here’s to owning all of it.