i did not wake up this morning and think: "wow. today is the day i'm going to get braces".

what i thought was: "hmm. i'm getting brackets today. wonder what that thing is. i bet it looks something like a retainer."

this all sounds a bit fuzzy. let me start at the beginning.

mom said, "chica, the dentist's office called. they want us there at monday, 9:30. lalagyan ka na daw ng brackets". so i thought, ok, brackets, whatever those are. i seriously imagined them as something that resembles retainers.

so i woke up at 7:30 this morning to get ready. the dentist's office is quite far and traffic is always bad along ortigas so my mom and i decided that an hour's allowance would be more than enough for me to get there on time. i was really grumpy because i don't usually wake up before 12 noon. fast forward to 9:30, the receptionist told me and my mom that the dentist would be in shortly. meanwhile, the dentist's assistant put the "bib" around me and turned on the overhead tv. it was 9:30 in the morning so the only thing that was on was NickJunior and Playhouse Disney and other kid's shows. the dentist got there soon enough and explained to me what he's gonna do to my teeth.

the plan was to get brackets on my teeth for two months. the purpose of which was to align them. after two months, a surgery with dr. echiverre will be done to get my hidden tooth out. after that, i'm back to the brackets.

it sounded pretty straightforward so i told him to go ahead. the dentist assistant brushed my teeth first. by that time, i found ripley's believe it or not on axn beyond. after that, the dentist got to work. i didn't really know what was going on with my teeth. the most i heard from the dentist was "open" and "bite". after an hour or so, i still had no idea what brackets are. when he brought out the metal thingies (those things that look like #s. :D), i suspected that brackets did not look like retainers. in fact, they look a lot like braces. he started gluing them to my teeth. i brushed it off. i am not getting braces! i am getting brackets!

he got up and when he came back, he was holding a tray of colorful strips with little circles hanging off.

it finally dawned on me that brackets were not retainers. brackets are parts of braces. i felt extremely stupid at that point in time. as a matter of fact, i still do. i thumbed through the strips of rubber. there was a wide range of colors. the dentist even had sparkly gold ones. i decided to go with baby blue. i'm new at this. there are plenty of opportunities to pick more daring colors.

and now, i have braces on my upper teeth. the dentist said we're focusing on the impacted tooth first. the lower teeth can be fixed after the surgery thing. who knew?