I'm Not Gonna Lie by George Lopez

Author:George Lopez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

BITE ME

ONE morning, I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, smiled, and made a decision.

“That’s it. I’m getting my teeth fixed.”

I was finally gonna do it. I’d lived with Stonehenge in my mouth for fifty years, and I’d had enough.

My mouth was a mess and getting worse. My gums had receded all the way to Reseda. My receding gums had caused my teeth to start caving in on themselves. A couple of my front teeth looked like crossed swords. Then I noticed that whenever somebody took my picture, my bottom teeth cast a dark, foreboding shadow. Not good when you spend a lot of your life in front of a camera.

I’d put off dealing with my teeth before, because I’m not that crazy about fifty-year-olds with braces. Especially when I’m the one walking around with the grille. That’s not a good look for me. I refused to leave the house looking like an oversize sixth-grade science nerd or the Mexican version of Flavor Flav.

As a kid, I let my teeth go. It was partly cultural. Going to the dentist was never a high priority for our family. It was too expensive and just not something you did. Plus it was a pain in the ass when I did go, because the dentist always found a ton of cavities. He gave me crap when I told him that I slept all night with a piece of candy in my mouth. Like that was a bad thing.

When I reached middle school, I started to become self-conscious about my bottom teeth, because they were a little crooked. One in particular was not only crooked; it was shorter than the others. I hated that. Made me feel like a freak. I decided to ask my grandmother about getting braces, but then something happened at school that changed my mind: Girls noticed me. And here’s the weird part: They thought my teeth were cute.

“Ooh,” they said, “it’s so adorable how your little tooth is kind of crooked. It gives you such character.”

I couldn’t fix my teeth after that. Forget it. I had to stay cute.

Then my little tooth kept growing. And growing. It kept growing until it became a fang. Suddenly girls no longer called me adorable or said I had character. They stopped talking to me at all. One day I brought up the idea of braces to my grandmother.

“Braces? You kidding me? Your teeth are so adorable.”

It took several years, until I was out of school, but I finally decided to pay more attention to my teeth. I made an appointment with a dentist, a guy RJ recommended. One thing about RJ: Dude has good teeth.

“Go to my guy,” he said. “He’ll fix you up.”

So I went. The dentist spent about an hour going over my teeth, poking around, and peering into my mouth with that little handheld mirror. The whole time he kept shaking his head and muttering, “Wow, yeah, huh,” and occasionally, “Ooh, wow, damn.” Finally, he snapped off that

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