I should have known something was off when the dentist smiled a little too big.
“You’re going to love your new smile,” she said, snapping on her gloves like she was about to fight plaque in a WWE match.
I sat back in the chair, trying to act all cool. It was my first time getting my teeth whitened, and all I could think about was walking into school with a smile so bright it blinded people in the hallway. That was the goal.
But then came the white stuff.
They said it was to “protect my gums,” but it looked like someone squirted toothpaste foam and let it harden like cement. It felt weird, like my mouth was being shrink-wrapped. “Try not to move,” the assistant warned, tilting the big blue light over my face. (It burned!)
Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one drooling under a laser beam.
Two hours later, they peeled it off, handed me a mirror, and said, “Voila!”
I looked.
My teeth were … whiter?
Kind of?
But something was definitely off.
The color was uneven, and one of my gums looked … wait. Was that my actual gum peeling up??
I panicked. At home, I checked it in better lighting. That white “gum protector” was still stuck in places, so I picked at it gently. Mistake.
Because it wasn’t the leftover foam.
It was my actual gum. My skin.
I stared at the little flap like it was proof I was falling apart. It started bleeding. I freaked out. I googled everything. (Big mistake. WebMD said I was going to lose my mouth!)
My teeth hurt so bad I couldn’t eat anything. Not even fries. I had one bite of vanilla ice cream and screamed like someone punched me in the tooth.
“I’m never smiling again,” I mumbled with an ice pack on my face and a tear rolling down my cheek.
The next morning, I checked the mirror again. My gum was healing … kind of. The bleeding had stopped. But now my teeth looked yellow again.
“How are they darker already?!”
I brushed. I flossed. I stared at myself like I was in a toothpaste commercial gone wrong.
At school, my best friend said, “Your smile looks fine.”
Fine?! I didn’t go through emotional trauma for “fine”. I wanted sparkly, slay, blinding.
But someone else said, “You have such pretty teeth.”
That’s when I realized something important.
My teeth weren’t perfect. But they were mine. And no one really notices the tiny things we obsess over. They just see the smile.
So I smile for real. Gums and all.
And this time, it didn’t even hurt.
