I swear I’m not a vain person. If I was, I’d work out at the gym every day, in full makeup and a cute outfit. But I don’t and the result is something I think they call Letting Yourself Go.

But over the years, I’d always been bothered by a decidedly non-cute part of my body that I couldn’t tolerate anymore about the time I turned 40.

I had fangs.

My canine teeth used to be very pointy and I was always self-conscious of them, such that I hated smiling broadly, especially in pictures. The teeth are also positioned slightly higher up on the gum than my other teeth, making them more noticeable if I wasn’t careful to smile close-lipped.

I had been seeing my wonderful dentist for years before it finally occurred to me to ask if anything could be done about them. He said “Sure, we’ll just cut the tips off, file them down and then cap ‘em.” God, I wish I had thought to ask sooner.

Before I knew it, I was fangless, happy, and smiling big again. I even saved the tips. For what, I don’t know. And evidently I lost one. Here’s the one that survived.

fang 

I’m not the first in my family to be introduced to cosmetic dentistry. One of my sisters used to have a space between her teeth, with which she used to entertain friends and family. She had a remarkable ability to squirt water through the space in a half dozen directions. Grab your raincoat!

I was sad when she got the space filled because isn’t it a sister’s duty to perform water fountain stunts whenever I wanted?

And my other sister got braces in her thirties. God bless her. Can you imagine? Of course, when you have braces as an adult, and anyone makes fun of you, my guess is you can tell them to go to hell with confidence. As a kid, not so much.

So have any of you changed something about your body that you hated? If you’re like me, you’re happy you did it and wonder why you waited so long.

Now everybody say cheese!

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