In my plooky youth, which to be honest doesn’t seem that long ago, I adorned the metal contraption in my mouth that was to make my teeth straight.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…THE BRACE! (queue dramatic music).

The brace back in 1986 when I was in first year at high school, was a sight to behold for some.

1. The Plate Brace – somehow it fitted in your mouth and onto your teeth with all the grace of an elephant donning ballet shoes. It’s pink flesh-like colour just would not camouflage itself against the colour of  your teeth no matter how hard you brushed and as a result you barely smiled for the next three years. Not for any cosmetic reason but just so that you didn’t blind people with your manic smile and eyes – silently pleading to everyone PLEASE DON’T LOOK AT ME.

2. Next came The Train Track – if you were lucky it was only ‘created’ for the top row of teeth. The metal links connecting the teeth with slim shards of steel. The cogs on the front were tightened at each visit. Not a pleasant memory I would imagine. If you were not lucky then you would have tracks on the lower jaw too and your new friend Bonjela would be a constant reminder of the pain you are in every time you put your hand in your pocket. If you were really, really unlucky you would then have minute elastic bands connecting the lower and upper jaw so your intake of food was more of the mushy variety than anything else.

3. The Sleeper Train – this was the same as No 2 but at night or even worse, during the day, you had a head connector that was linked, again by elastic bands, to the steel monstrosities that had invaded your mouth and set up shop.

The reason I am reminiscing on this fantastic achievement my molars went through is that Wee N now has a brace. And he is only 9. Thankfully its just the plate kind otherwise I would be weeping into my Pinot Grigio every night knowing that the morning ritual would be taken over by seeping mouth ulcers and force feeding my children through straws!

I’m thinking of the fantastic row of gleaming white pearls he will have at the end of it all and not the lisp, the jaggy bits and the possible erosion that might even make things worse if he forgets to clean it.

This is house is now a toffee free zone.