I was having lunch with two new co-workers, one age 34 and of naturally straight teeth who's 12 year old daughter just  got metal braces, and was being a drama queen about not getting invisalign like her friend.  I said I never knew teens could get Invisalign and asked was that the end of metal braces?

Glenn, the other woman, who is 64, was laughing at the 12 year old drama queen line.  In 1965 she was 12 when the dentist recommended she see an orthodontist. No one wanted braces in 1965 and she went into her queen routine. Glenn and her mother were in a life long battle of wills. Her mother was 42 at the time and had a noticeable overbite and had said more than once she wished she had gotten braces as a kid but she was a child of the depression and there was no money.  She was quite sensitive about her teeth'

Glenn seized on that and said she would get braces "when you get braces" if its good for me, its as good for me as it is for you.  That was a line her mother used all of the time.  As Glenn got older the battle of wills just intensified, always respectful but family warfare never the less. 

When Glenn was a sophomore her mother tried again to get her to agree to braces.  Glenn said, intellectually, she knew she needed them but had started dating and certainly did not want braces then and just as sure, did not want to give in to her mother.  "I will when you do."

The day after Christmas Glenn went skiing with friends.  Her older brother picked her up from the train station.  He kept laughing all the way home and would not say why.  She walked in the door and there was her mother wearing headgear.  In an instant Glenn saw the implications.

Family lore has it Glenn's eyes shot out of her sockets like a cartoon character.  Her brother swears she backed away like a cheap sci-fi movie, shielding her eyes from the unspeakable horror and all but screaming "No, nooooooo."  Her mother was one of the very few adults, at 45 years old, wearing full metal bands.  And headgear.  Two years later she had the straight teeth she always wanted and said the misery, pain, social embarrassment and cost it was more than worth it just to see Glenn's face in that moment.

Glenn could not believe it.  A month later she had it all, full bands with a high pull headgear.  Her mother, a stay at home mom,  was averaging over 20 hours a day with her headgear and gave no slack for Glenn's 14 hours plus, every day for over a year.  Surprisingly, after the headgear wars ended, that seemed to stop the mother daughter feud.