Closing the gap on self-consciousness

As a kid I always used to tease my friends who got braces and brag about how I didn’t need them. Sure, I had a gap between my two front teeth, but that was it. Everything else was straight.

Secretly, I wanted that gap closed. Being an obnoxious kid, however, I just smiled and called names like “brace face” and “metal mouth.” It was all in jest and good humor with some hidden envy. As I grew older my perception of the gap widened and I became self-conscious and ashamed. I hid my smile. I spoke less. I didn’t know it, but my shame affected my personality and character.

Being gap-toothed, a slow thinker and having poor eye-hand coordination made my friends and classmates think of me as stupid. I must have been stupid, because I believed them. I grew up believing I was slow, stupid and ugly. My parents tried to get me to believe otherwise, but the perception of my peers had become my reality.

Things changed in college and I overcame a lot of that false perception. I found success and became friendlier and more self-confident – even to the point of being arrogant and cocky. It took a rapid string of life-changing events in the late 1980s to bring me back to my old reality.

I had my wisdom teeth pulled about that time. After that, the gap between my front teeth did widen – a lot. My teeth began shifting backward and all kinds of gaps opened in the front of my mouth. One tooth went crooked. It was a slow process that took decades. I again quit smiling. I again hid my teeth as much as humanly possible.

I wanted braces real bad but I could never afford them. What I didn’t know then was how much the lack of a smile and my self-consciousness was affecting my personality. All I could see and believe about me was how gap-toothed ugly I was and how slow and stupid I must be.

A few years ago I watched with great envy and frustration as my oldest son went through braces. He needed them and we had insurance for pediatric orthodontics. Braces for me would be considered cosmetic and not covered by insurance. My son managed to double his time as a dental cyborg by neglecting proper care. Still, you should see him smile now!

Now, everything has changed. God must have heard my prayers and seen my suffering. This year the stars aligned in a weird but wonderful way. First, the dentist informed us that our youngest son would need braces. Then, last May as I visited my mother in what became her deathbed, her dying wish for me was to get my teeth fixed. My dad vowed to honor that wish and offered to pay half of my expense to get braces.

The lynchpin came a little later when my wife’s company was bought out and her insurance changed. It included a benefit for adult orthodontics! When we took Colton, our youngest boy, to see Dr. Lee Mahlmann, we learned they offered a multi-patient family discount. If this isn’t a clear message from above, I don’t know what is.

Just a few days before Halloween and two weeks after Colton got his, I sat in the chair and received my brackets, wires and bands.

At the time of this writing, my teeth are moving and tender. The inside of my lips are like hamburger. It hurts. It’s hard to smile, but not because I don’t want to. The physical pain is trivial compared to the psychological and emotional pain I’ve suffered. I wear these braces and the cuts and scrapes inside my mouth as badges of honor and pride.

I’m overwhelmed with feelings of gratitude and hope. I may not show it on the outside, but I sure am smiling big on the inside. I have a renewed confidence going forward that my life is good and getting better all the time.

Texas Renaissance Festival an entertaining trek to take

It’s become a Southern family tradition to attend the Texas Renaissance Festival each year and to do it on Pirate Adventure weekend if possible.

We landlubbers treasure the opportunity to dress in costumes and steal away for a weekend to step back in time for merriment and excitement.

What you actually get is a lot of weirdness. I’m no expert but I heartily believe that the Renaissance Period did not look anything like what we saw at the festival held weekends each October and November in the greater Todd Mission metropolitan area.

I’m willing to bet there were no fairies, cross-dressers, spiked Mohawk naives, half-naked barbarians, freakish monsters, zombies or Star Wars clone troopers to grace the English countryside those many centuries ago. Yet that concoction of costumes is part of what makes the Texas Renaissance Festival so much fun.

The staff, for the most part, stays true to character. The king (Greg Taylor) and the queen (Rosella Gonzales) and their court are gracious hosts and great ambassadors of frivolity and cosplay coolness.

The people who dress in costumes tend to fall in one of three categories. There are those who dress in period costumes; those who dress in period-looking costumes with modifications; and those who just dress in costumes regardless of the period or genre.

My wife makes costumes on the side and prides herself on her Victorian era dresses. She made a pirate costume for our youngest son, Colton, but the affect was tainted by the tennis shoes he wore for lack of appropriate footwear. I came dressed as a reporter, complete with company polo shirt and Canon camera. (I heard more than one comment about lugging a heavy cannon around my neck and shooting people with it.)

My middle son, Luke, didn’t want to wear a costume until he found a fez for sale. All of sudden he was Doctor Who (and not the only one, I might add).

Costumes aside, there is a lot more to see and do than one can take in on a weekend. We camped out Saturday night and made a full weekend of it for the first time. We never did get bored, nor did we see everything we wanted to. The jousts and the costume contests were a high priority and did not disappoint.

The shops are unique and the food outstanding but be prepared to part with your shillings and pounds, as they have a captive audience and everything there is an impulse buy, so it’s not cheap. Even if you’re not in a buying mood, just watching the artisans make and hawk their wares is entertaining.

We were able to take in a couple of shows, including a hilarious take on Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and an awesome birds of prey program.

The fireworks on Saturday night were unlike any I had seen before, complete with images burned on the ground in the jousting arena.

This year marks the 40^th anniversary of the Texas Renaissance Festival. Special commemorative coins were made for the occasion and tossed to the masses by the king and queen during the noontime parade. I managed to snag a pair while fighting off some rather aggressive fairies and some yet-to-be-identified creatures who were trailing the royals and hoarding the booty.

If you’ve never been to the Ren Fest, or if it’s been a while, you might want to consider making a trek this year. It runs weekends through November, including Black Friday.

If you happen to go that weekend, you will enjoy Christmas festivities mixed with the usual weirdness of wardrobe. It will resemble the doorbusters at certain big box stores but with a much friendlier and hospitable attitude. And it makes for a great family tradition.