The Man With the Shiny Smile

Skinny Improv actor Jeff Houghton shares his experiences as an adult with braces. Beware of flying tortillas.

The tortilla stowaway from an earlier meal shot from my mouth in a parabolic arch. I paused. I was on stage at the Gillioz Theatre in front of several hundred people, and they could all see it. It flew past my fellow Skinny Improv actor and landed on the stage behind him. Pretending to not know where it came from, I looked above me in an attempt to deceive the audience. But I wasn’t fooling anybody.

The uncomfortable truth is that I have adult braces. Food projectiles big enough to be visible to an audience don’t just shoot out of the mouth of somebody without braces. People without braces would have already swallowed the food. I, on the other hand, had no idea it was there. You see, that’s the thing about braces: My lunch may have exited the scene, but the leftovers make surprise cameos the rest of the day.

A few years ago I came to the sad realization that I needed braces. The idea sent chills up my spine and across my misaligned bottom teeth. I avoided it as long as I could. Not only did I need braces, I needed the worst kind: Adult braces. I had missed the window of 11 to 17 years old when it is perfectly acceptable to have them. I was now staring down the prospect of turning 30 with an adolescent’s mouth and the five o’clock shadow of a grown man.

The optimistic pamphlet I found at my orthodontist’s office touted adult braces as “this season’s newest fashion accessory.” This did nothing to restore my confidence. My peace of mind plummeted even further when I entered the narrow fluorescent-lit room of Dr. Jerry Cash’s Springfield office. Mothers relayed stories of soccer practices, pizza parties and carpooling while their children reclined, mouths agape, enduring their rites of passage. Meanwhile, I sat in the chair contemplating my 401(k) and planning the demise of the short-sighted orthodontist of my teens.

Yet for all the dread I put myself through, I have learned some very important things in the past several months:

• When people see that I have braces they react in one of three ways: They tell me that they hardly notice. They tactlessly tell me that when they had braces, they had to have them for years longer than planned. Or they show me how their not-actually-crooked bottom teeth need braces.
• Flossing is a nightly obscenity-inducing experience.
• The requisite diet modification is an adventure in masochism. Here is a rundown: Even eating pudding hurts on the day after an adjustment, all cucumber seeds get stuck in the front braces, and sugar-free candy gives you the toots.

Yet, the one thing that I learned above all else is that having adult braces isn’t so bad. Here is the ultimate truth: Nobody concerned themselves with my teeth before, they don’t now, and they won’t when I get the braces off. Why would they? If by chance someone does have a problem with my braces, they surely won’t tell me because they know I may have some leftover tortilla locked and loaded.

—Jeff Houghton, 29, is a field representative for the Community Blood Center of the Ozarks in Springfield. He’s also a member of the Skinny Improv comedy group in Springfield. He hosts a live, late-night talk show called “The Mystery Hour” once a month at the Skinny Improv theater. Get more info at theskinnyimprov.com.

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