My dentists have been bugging me since I was about 10 to get braces to improve my bite. I use about four actual teeth in the chewing process and as I have gotten older and these molars have decayed, gotten cavities and fillings, gotten crowned, it's become more of a concern. So I picked up my first set of Invisalign braces yesterday and am talking with a mild lisp like the King of Spain, or David Sedaris, pre-speech therapy. This becomes a major vanity issue as I can't imagine reading poetry to an audience with these plastic devices in my mouth. The fact that they are made of plastic concerns me too, but I am trying to keep in perspective that I wore thin plastic lenses on my eyeball for 15 years in order to see. I have just made a year and a half commitment to this course of treatment. That just seems interminable... Like Sedaris in his essay in "Me Talk Pretty One Day," I am re-imagining my language - avoiding words with the letter "s" and "f." It's not that easy!