Vanities

I love my teeth. I come from a family of smokers—folks who puffed until their teeth were yellow like corn niblets and their gums were in need of several painful tune-ups from the local periodontist. Me, I smoked, but only for a short time (I needed to bolster my image as a tortured intellectual in college and the turtleneck and black beret just didn’t quite do it), and I’ve never been a huge coffee drinker.

So, my teeth are pearly, pearly white. Two other relevant facts about my parents is that they were relatively wealthy and relatively status conscious, so they paid to have my naturally, uh… exuberant teeth corralled by the local orthodontist into some semblance of unremarkable straightness. Believe me, I’m not complaining—I looked like a beaver until Dr. K got his hands on me. I can no longer chew the paint off a wall, but I’ve learned to forgo that particular activity in favor of teeth that allow me to close my mouth all the way.

Like I said, I love ‘em. Actually, I’m crazy vain about them. I like to look at them in mirrors, just to remind myself that there’s a part of me that’s pretty. There’s not much about my appearance that I take pleasure in these days, but the teeth have stayed with me, through thick and thin, through bad hair days and bad outfit days… and God bless ‘em, they look exactly the same no matter what I weigh.

So, what about you? What are your secret (or not so secret) vanities?