Scenes From an Orthodontist's Office

(on a monday morning)

A pile of magazines akimbo, atop what looks like the desk I had in Ms. Strauss’ fourth grade: scratched, worn, faded, bearing the marks of a generation or three of students and dental patients who’ve sat before and moved beyond it. With a second son in this office, alas, I have not.
 
Thank you very much.  
 
A smile and a nod. A clipboard passes from a mother with too much make-up to a receptionist who does not need any. Behind the mother, two young girls whose apples of fashion sense have not fallen far from the unpruned tree; teased hair and painted nails and Ugg boots that, were it forty degrees cooler, would still be unnecessary, or at least unwise. But this morning, with fifty-five degrees of sun and unseasonable warmth, they just seem untoward: the unfortunate choices of two young girls with, if her fur collar and Bluetooth headset are any reliable indicator, an excellent role model in the practice.  
 
Still I look to find a reason to believe...
 
Rod Stewart, live and unplugged, bearing good advice one song after Paul McCartney urged us to let it be. The music, like the exposed brick on the walls, is old and worn, but firm and strong and sturdy enough for this room, this place, this morning of comings and goings and reawakenings.

And too-loud cell-phonings.

We’re at the orthodontist’s office. We’re almost done.
 
I hope so. And I suspect, had she just opened the door and stuck her head out and spoken at the same volume, her friend would have heard her anyway.
 
Two brothers argue over a catalog. Pages and pages of sneakers at prices that could feed these kids for a week, or two kids in Africa for a year. If they are bought and worn, they will be appreciated, perhaps, for the first few moments, then taken for granted, shuffling four-and-a-half feet below three-thousand-dollar smiles that, with a nod and a shrug, will pass for what still passes for gentility.
 
Amid the din and clatter of the dental instruments, past rows and rooms of hard-working hygienists, Ethan walks, mouth open but unwary, talking the talk and smiling the smile of a boy who has not yet learned to demand. He sits happily in his chair. He does not spit, nor rinse.

Adam Levine on the radio now, wanting desperately to make sure everything's alright.

I know how he feels.