- by Hugh McKay, Sydney Morning Herald, 12th January,
2002.
Perhaps we should dub it the Orthodontic Complex, this mad idea
that our lives should be glamorous and gloriously free from blemish
or mishap. The obsessive straightening of our teeth has become the
great symbol of the Age of Cool.
Archaeologists of the future will wonder why dental uprightness
mattered so much, back in the 21st century. Was it a symbol of moral
intent (upright teeth, upright life; tidy desk, tidy mind ... that
kind of thing) ? Were they expressing a wish to change the very
body that nature gave them, as a way of minimising their sense of
mortality and the imperfection of human existence ? Had they confused
symmetry with beauty ?
It's all a terrible delusion, of course. Life is messy and teeth
are as good a symbol as any of its essential messiness. Decayed
and crooked and, in the end, crumbling... I think I recognise myself
in there somewhere, and what's wrong with that ? There's plenty
of joy to be experienced along the way, but straight teeth are no
guarantee you'll find it.
The orthodontic craze appears to be driven by aspirational middle-class
parents who are anxious to give their children every possible advantage:
Nike booties, a deluxe preschool, tennis lessons at three, a couple
of musical instruments under their belt before they can read, coaching
for everything... and, of course, straight teeth.
But what will be the pay-off ? The bad news, dear parent, is that
you'll endure just as much opprobrium when they hit their mid-teens
as you would have if you'd force-fed them tripe and tapioca pudding
and banned TV from the house. Hardship lies ahead for all of them
- whether their teeth are crooked or straight - and there's something
to be said for having to deal with it early on.
The arresting opening sentence of
The Fish Can Sing, the
1966 novel by Halldor Laxness, runs like this:
"A wise man once said that next to losing
its mother, there is nothing more healthy for a child than to lose
its father."
That reminds me of an oft-quoted remark my mother attributed to
Lord Someone-or-Other (I should have paid more attention):
"I had the great advantage of disadvantage"
The downside of parents too-eager attempts to create beautiful
lives for their children is the reduction of the children's capacity
to absorb disappointment. No wonder kids - even middle-aged kids
- are increasingly inclined to blame their own parents for their
shortcomings, mistakes, failures and other miseries. The "deprived
childhood" has become the great excuse ("I don't want to hear of
any arsonist having had a deprived childhood," wrote one correspondent
to a Sydney newspaper at the height of the bushfire crisis.)
There are such things as deprived childhoods; the trick is finding
one that wasn't deprived in some way. If you parents were
affluent, you were overindulged; if they were poor, you felt you'd
missed out. If they were smart, you were intimidated or patronised;
if they were stupid, you suffered from a poor example. If they encouraged
you, you were pushed too hard; if they didn't, you were neglected.
Parents can't win. If they die, they leave a child marooned in
a sea of pity. If they live, they're bound to make mistakes that
will have scarred their offspring, one way or another, by the time
they reach adulthood. Who doesn't carry the wounds of childhoods
through life ?
Most parents do their best, even if they scarcely know what they're
doing. By their early teens, most children have already detected
their parent's flaws (the deepest of which sometimes turns out to
be the attempt to appear flawless). It is the fate of almost all
parents to become, sooner or later, the butt of their children's
mockery, despair and irritation.
So what ? Parents might as well accept as part of their destiny
that they'll become the reference point for their offspring's harsh
judgements upon the human condition; that's a healthy phase in a
child's development. The challenge is not for parents to rise above
their child's displeasure or embarrassment; the challenge is for
the children, as they mature, to accept they'd better work with
what they've got - genetically and otherwise.
"Origins were origins," says a character in Saul
Bellow's 1982 novel The Dean's December... (This has been
a holiday for enjoying lost classics.) "You did the best you could
with them. You couldn't turn them in for a better set."
When it comes to teeth, though, you can turn them in for a better
set. Long ago, I endured bands designed to straighten one of my
front teeth. There was a short-term effect, but the tooth soon resumed
its natural angle, where it has resolutely remained ever since,
symbolizing something, I'm sure.
- Hugh McKay, Sydney Morning Herald, 12th January,
2002.
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