A soup for when it hurt

The latest soup on the menu is beef barley.

I’ve always been a fan, even though for a long time, I associated it with pain.

Every few months, I’d have to get my braces tightened, a wonderfully pleasant experience that involved removing the existing wire and replacing it with a new one that was just a little bit tighter.

Strange as it may be for anyone whether I’d ever shut up to believe, for much of my life, my teeth haven’t always fit properly in my mouth because there wasn’t enough space.

As a child, it meant getting several teeth pulled. As an adult, it means I’ll be getting one of my upper wisdom teeth out in a couple months because it’s impinging on the tooth next to it. (Its lower counterpart came out several years ago after breaking and getting infected.)

And as a teenager, it meant braces.

I wore braces from my junior year in high school through my sophomore year in college. Because I would have them for my senior pictures, I got clear ones on top so they wouldn’t show, although you can’t really see them in the photo which wound up in the yearbook.

Yes, that was me. Wasn’t I adorable?

It made playing the trombone pretty unpleasant, especially during the weekends I spent in Lake Placid with the all-Northeast concert band. We’d rehearse for hours each day, which left the inside of my upper lip purple with a thin, white line across the top.

There were tables of ice water behind the trombone section, so when we weren’t playing, I’d hold my lip in cup of water to help numb the pain. It mostly worked.

Every few months, I’d have to get my braces tightened, a wonderfully pleasant experience that involved removing the existing wire and replacing it with a new one that was just a little bit tighter.

It hurt a lot, plus I didn’t really like the people at my orthodontist’s office … maybe because they were inflicting all sorts of pain on me.

Making things worse, I couldn’t eat solid food on those days, which meant eating a lot of … beef barley soup.

It’s a wonder those memories aren’t a trigger to make me hate it today.

By the way, pro tip — if one side of your mouth is numb after a root canal, don’t get mozzarella sticks for lunch, thinking, “They’re thin. I’ll just shove them in one side of my mouth.”

It doesn’t work. Just trust me on this one.

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