I am now going to ruin your Christmas:

[PCIntern]

If you watch one of our favorite films, A Christmas Story, you will see that the bully, Scut Farkas, has orthodontic braces on his teeth. The close-up of him reveals that he has bonded brackets which did not exist in those days - they used circumferential metal bands. Bonding was thirty years in the future….actually there aren't too many anachronisms in the flick (pardon the pun).

But it's OK…it's one of the greatest American films ever made, and my personal hero-of-the-media Jean Shepherd deserves almost all of the credit. BTW, Shep in his personal life was one of the worst people around…he had essentially nothing to do with his own kids and abandoned his family of origin almost totally.

But professionally, he was one of the greatest monologuists in the history of the country.

[monmouth4]

1. I wore those $#@ bands for a couple of years. Awful, and they did not work...n/t

[Uben]

10. I did too, and they did work

I had a serious over-bite that was corrected, but it was nothing short of torture! The inside of my mouth was constantly bleeding from the damned wires. I also had what they called a tongue-thrust swallow. This, too, was corrected by me wearing a retainer for two years with wires protruding out of it so that when my tongue hit the wires, I would pull it away. Imagine having needles sticking out the back of your two front teeth....that's what it was like. Oh, it worked okay, but it was torture.

[tularetom]

2. I always thought of his buddy Grover Dill as the poster boy for dental neglect anyway

When Ralphie says "his lip curled over his green teeth" that sort of cinched it for me.

[JI7]

3. was it the actor's own braces that he needed

[JHB]

4. If I can handle spaceships making noise in space, I can handle anachronistic dental work

[Jackpine Radical]

7. And those wonderful, billowing explosions in Star Wars & the like--

Yeah.

[BlueJazz]

12. They don't do it so much any more but back when, I used to love how space ships would..

...curve in flight.

[Hekate]

5. If they weren't his actual braces, they were probably removable prostheses for the part...

Funny you should notice that. It's the kind of thing that gets to me too, sometimes, like having sand in your favorite sandals.

I will refrain from telling my neighbor this; he is such an utter fan of that movie that he watches it every single year.

[JaneyVee]

6. FRAJEELE!

[seveneyes]

8. I will now proceed to entangle the entire area

Must be because I had the flu' for Christmas and I'm not feeling up to par.
It increases my paranoia, like looking at my mirror and seeing a police car.
But I'm not giving in an inch to fear cause I missed myself this year.
I feel like I owe it to someone.

[gwheezie]

9. I listened to Jean shepherd as a kid

In my room with a transistor radio in the dark. He was on wor at 10pm past my bedtime.

[PCIntern]

14. I have about 1100 of his radio shows...

what a fascinating man and life's work.

[frazzled]

11. I was a metal mouth

and I can still remember the pain! My mouth was too small to accommodate all the adult teeth, and in those days, they just pulled four molars, hammered on those metal bands with a mallet ... and within hours (or so it seemed), all the rest of your teeth moved in to fill the spaces. Ouch. Applesauce and soup for a week.

My son had the same issue, but by his time the orthodontist pulled no teeth: he fit an appliance that had to be turned with a wrench one turn each night, for a long period of time, to stretch the jaw. Later, braces were fitted. My son ended up with a super handsome jawline (that orthodontist was an artist) and straight teeth. (Note to son: please shave the beard so the world can appreciate the thousands of dollars we poured into that jawline.)

[Javaman]

13. Nice Post, Hitler.

Happy Holidays!