Part One
The smile, perhaps one of the oldest facial expressions in the history of man. In fact, it could be argued that the smile goes back before Man into the days of the Neanderthals. A simple facial expression. Two muscles contract, pulling the lips up and apart, exposing the teeth and if performed correctly will bring a subjective amount of joy to the One who is on the receiving end. In short, a very powerful gesture.
I started this life with a set of children's teeth that were no different from anyone else. It wasn't till my adult teeth came in that I started to notice that my teeth were quite different than those around me. I am not sure when my parents first told me about the genetic condition that runs in our Bloodline and only our Bloodline. It's name Tricho-Dento-Osteo-Syndrome. A disorder derived from a single mutation in one of my ancestors many, many years ago. As the name suggests, the disorder effects my hair, teeth, and bones. Those who are born with it have a deep brown curly hair that overrides any other genetic hair programming that may lay along the double helix. This in itself is not much of anything. It's when you pair it with the other two that it becomes interesting. My genetic strip is missing the genes that would have told my body to grow enamel on my teeth. From a physical perspective this leaves the teeth without much size or substance. My adult teeth in some cases were smaller than my baby teeth. This lack of protection(enamel provides size and protection) left my teeth very fragile. I visited the dentist twice a week from the time my adult teeth first came in to late in my teenage years. The dentists would paint a protective covering on my teeth to protect them from decay. Even with this protection they were still very fragile. Any minor(and I mean minor) trauma would lead to an abscess and by the time I was 13 I had gone through more than four root canals.
This made growing up tough. Everyone who has had a noticeable physical deformity growing up, knows the pain other children can cause. Kids made fun. Kids teased. Kids hurt me emotionally and physically. I could place my thumb between each of my teeth they were so spaced apart. They looked like small white Tic Tacs hanging from my gums. Very, very ugly. I can say now that I don't blame them for not understanding. I don't blame them for making me sit alone at lunch for over two years in a row. I don't even blame them for the self esteem issues I dealt with for many years afterwards. Kids will be Kids but I tell you this to set the stage for what was to come next. You see, throughout all of this I had one thing that kept me sane, my Bones. Yes the third part of the disorder. You see when the doctor's where studying my mother and I, they found that the same genes that were missing are the ones that also controlled bone density. In layman's terms, my bone density had no shut off switch. My bones would continue to grow stronger my entire life instead of peaking out at the end of puberty. I grasped this like a man's last match who is trapped in a cave. This meant I had something on all of these kids. Their teeth might look a lot better than mine but I had bones that would never break. There is not a single case of a male in my family, who has had the disorder , ever having a broken bone. I was unbreakable or so I felt. I was the closest thing there might be to a real life superhero. This was the thought that comforted me as I would cry myself to sleep, night after night, week after week. Even to this day, this is the one thing that keeps me from hating my condition. The one thing that allowed me to be special in my own eyes, if not in the eyes of others.
More to come tomorrow.
