FOURTH OF JULY, 1976: BRACE YOURSELF

No matter how many Fourth of July’s I celebrate, my mind is always drawn back to our nation’s Bicentennial. July 4, 1976. While Americans celebrated 200 years of freedom, my mouth was adapting to the installation of barbed-wire on my teeth. Yes, that adolescent rite-of-passage, braces. To add insult to injury, my orthodontist, Dr. George Diament, gave all of his silver-mouthed patients tee-shirts with the iconic 1970’s Smiley Face wearing braces. The braces-wearing Smiley Face shouted, “BRACES ARE BEAUTIFUL!” The unwritten subtext was, “But I’m Not!”

Only God knows why I was compelled to wear that shirt on July 4^th, 1976 as my family trekked down the one thousand crudely carved bluestone steps of the Palisades (hauling coolers of salami sandwiches, Lays Potato Chips, little neck Rolling Rock ale, a cylindrical blue plastic thermos of gin and tonics, and cans of ShopRite grape soda) to join the rest of old Fort Lee and Edgewater down at the base of the Hudson River at Bunty’s Dock to watch the regatta of ships afloat in “Operation Sail.”  Looking at photographs from that day, the shirt truly enhanced my je ne sais quoi? Geekiness. I mean, really, what was I thinking? “Braces are Beautiful” was an oxymoron to the moron (moi) wearing the shirt.

          Middle School is traumatic enough, so it makes no sense to slap your smile with braces at that precise moment when your inner-dork decides to become an outie. And it wasn’t just the braces that you had to contend with, but the goody bag of accessories that came with it. The rubberbands, the ball of wax, the hooked toothpick, the headgear. Hands down, the worst part for me was the “headgear.” Remember that pinkish-beige neck strap-on that was the height of fashion circa-anytime 1970’s? It connected an external vise-like semi-circular wire to your braces, the purpose of which was to use the sheer force of excruciating pain to shift your entire jaw into the next room.  

On the cutting edge of orthodontistry, Dr. Diament took the headgear to a new level. His headgear not only included the snazzy neck brace, but a plastic skull cap. Together, the neck brace and the skull cap cleaved themselves to the parenthetical wire protruding from your grossly deformed mouth. While the neck brace yanked your molars into the back of your skull, the mental-patient helmet wrenched your misaligned eyeteeth (and your eyebrows) down to your toes. To take one look at me was to think that one of my ancestors mated with a rabid Schnauzer.  

Added to this wretched scene were rubberbands. Those mini Campbell-soup-like rings-o’s housed in a small mustard-colored mailing envelope you kept in your pocket. Not only couldn’t you open your mouth, but how many of you got shot in the eye with one of them when your friend yawned? Talk about bringing weapons to school! I can still feel the breaking sting of the rubberband against my gums before it ricocheted directly into Mary Lutz’s face. She never complained because her rubberbands snapped me more than a few times.

The braces shredded the inside of my cheeks tingeing everything I ate with the taste of blood. Every time I smiled my cheeks got impaled on the wire! (I can still feel the scars.) The only relief came from covering the wires with wax which inevitably led to bartering with the person who sat in front of you in class for a piece of their wax because you either used yours all up or, more likely, left it home. Depending on your desperation, these transactions could be shadowy and costly. I think I promised my first-born to George Frangos. (By the way George, I’m ready to make good on that delivery!)

Now, my husband and his brother and sister never wore braces. (Ah, the aristocrats of Abbott Boulevard!) Not because their teeth were necessarily straight. I’m certain it’s because their mother loved her children too much to put them through that physical pain and psychological degradation. My husband possesses an uncannily undisturbed sense of confidence that I attribute to his not having had to suffer through the social suicide of braces and headgear. Me, and all my braced head-gear-wearing compatriots, are still trying to unearth the remains of our dignity buried by braces somewhere back in the ‘70’s. Alcohol helps.  

SCENT-SATIONAL MEMORIES

Our minds make peculiar mental associations when triggered by certain scents. For instance, whenever I smell seasoned chop meat frying in a pan I’m sent back to my grandmother’s kitchen circa 1967; whenever I smell the Hudson River at low-tide I remember all those late ‘60’s/early 70’s summers swimming and crabbing off the deck of Bunty’s Dock near the base of the George Washington Bridge; whenever I’m in a car and I smell burning fuel I hear my father ordering us to run before the Falcon exploded. (My dad was Wile E. Coyote with cars—every trip, near or far, was tinged with the threat of explosion! I truly believe my old man was the inspiration behind the Discovery Channel’s “Mythbusters;” albeit without the benefit of safety gear or disability insurance.)

Where was I? Oh yeah, smell and memory. Recently, my daughter received a bottle of “Love’s Baby Soft;” when she unscrewed that pink cylindrical cap the scent rushed my brain back to 1976. “Love’s Baby Soft” was the “Evening in Paris” of my generation. Every school’s hallway was drenched in Love’s Baby Soft’s narcotic powdery undertones. I distinctly remember a boy leaning over and saying, “Wow, your perfume smells great,” to which I replied, “That’s not me, that’s Rosemary,” who sat on the other side of the classroom; proving that even if you failed to put your “Love” on, all you had to do was stand next to a girl who did to be infused by its contagious scent.

Which brings me to the eighth grade. I accompanied my mom to her friend’s, whose son I was madly in love with. He was a year ahead of me at Holy Trinity, but was now a freshman at Bergen Catholic. He was an altar-boy; he played basketball; he was a drummer. I had loved him since the fifth grade; he had loved my best friend since the fourth. Anyway, as I sat alone and bored on his couch watching T.V. I decided to go in search of his bedroom. He wasn’t home, but I thought if I could catch a glimpse of his room, I’d somehow know him better.  

I walked down the dimly-lit beige-carpeted hallway of his split-level house. The door to the first room I passed was slightly opened, and I caught a glimpse of his drum set. (Cue heavenly music.) I pushed the door open and crossed into the inner-sanctum of his manly boudoir. I immediately noticed that over his desk hung a cabinet whose door was slightly ajar. I had every intention of closing it, but in a last minute reversal, I opened it instead. Things, lots and lots of things, came nose-diving out in rapid succession; something large and white came hurtling into my open palm and affixed itself to my hand like a glove. It was his jock strap. I freaked.

I tried to shake it off, because there was NO WAY I was touching it, but the more I shook it, the tighter it twisted around my wrist. Of course at that moment I heard the wheels of his ten-speed Schwinn steer into the garage. “Oh. My. God!” I had to get out of his bedroom fast, so I thrust my arm inside my zippered sweatshirt and retreated like Napoleon at Waterloo to the living room where I jumped onto the couch. I tried to act nonchalant as Mike Douglas interviewed Zsa Zsa Gabor while my right hand was indelicately shoved down my sweatshirt.

Walking up the stairs from the basement, he seemed surprised to see me sitting on his couch. Just as he was about to sit down beside me his mom called him into the kitchen. Noticing my hand shoved down my shirt he asked me what was wrong. I panicked! What could I say, “Nothing, I’m just wearing your jock strap like a Speidel I.D. bracelet?” Instead my quivering thin lips released a nervous idiotic giggle that made my orthodontic retainer vibrate. Before retreating to the kitchen, he leaned over me and said, “Mmmm…Love’s Baby Soft?” I think I lost consciousness at that point.

Decades later, the scent of Love’s Baby Soft evokes memories of unrequited love, vibrating retainers, and the twisted jock straps of altar boys.