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A brief clinical history of the columnist's teeth: At age 6½, her primary central and lateral incisors were wiggled out and replaced by a pair of chompers so prominent she would earn the nickname "Bucky" for the duration of childhood.

The bedtime thumb-sucking didn't help. Two years later, Janice Zinky pushed her off a jungle gym, resulting in a severe chip to the upper lateral. Lack of fluoride in her hometown water supply resulted in three cavities in lower molars, which were drilled out and replaced by metal fillings at great expense to the columnist's father, a travelling salesman with no company dental plan. By the time she was 12, flaring in the upper canines was severe, accompanied by a widening gap between her lower incisors. All this was the result of an involuntary tongue thrust, a condition exacerbated by her constant compulsion to chatter.

By 13, the diagnosis was clear: Headgear was on the horizon. Her parents' bank book quaked in its drawer. Bucky was to become Braceface.

She went to the orthodontist, a twitchy little man who took moulds of her teeth and spoke in terms of months instead of weeks and thousands instead of hundreds. Her frugal mother grumbled at the "insanity" of it all, but grimly stayed the course. But then an unexpected thing happened: A week before the braces were to be installed, the orthodontist committed a grisly crime of passion (one too bizarre and distracting to detail here). He was incarcerated, and the appointment, obviously, was cancelled. The columnist's mother, an avowed atheist, decided to interpret this happening as a sign from God. "I knew that orthodontist was nuts," she declared. There was no more talk of braces.

And that was how the columnist ended up a grown woman with a mouthful of crooked teeth.

Until very recently, I took it for granted that my slightly wonky enamels were simply a part of me. I no more thought of changing them than I fantasized about removing the freckles from my nose. It's not that I lack vanity, more that I hate change. I'm a practical girl. My snaggleteeth were perfectly good at chewing things and my friends assured me they gave me "character."

But things change. Around age 30, the first signs of decline had begun. Adult crowding was turning my two front teeth into one, and the childhood tongue thrust persisted, widening my lower gap to Chaucerian proportions.

Braces were out of the question. The only thing worse than crooked teeth, after all, was everybody knowing how vain you are about them. It's like wearing a sign on your back saying, "I'm getting liposuction." I'd rather be fat.

"How about Invisalign?" my dentist suggested at my annual check-up.

I had no idea what she was talking about.

"I'm wearing them now," she said raising her lips in a smile. At first, I saw nothing. On closer look, a fine transparent veneer of plastic appeared.

"Invisible braces," she said. "No one will know the difference."

And so, several dentist visits, one moulding and thousands of dollars later, I finally met my destiny as a braceface.

Once the disposable plastic "trays" came in from the Invisalign headquarters in the U.S., my dentist sat me down and showed me a 3-D computer model of my teeth.

"This is your bite now," she said, rotating the image of my alien maw around the screen like a CSI detective. "And this is what your bite will look like a year from now." Miraculously, the digital teeth leapt up out of their miserable jumble and reordered themselves into jaunty formation. It was a perfect smile - one that would soon be mine! I was so happy I skipped out of the dentist's office, ignoring her offer of Advil.

Regret set in two hours later as I sat at my desk unable to work for the feeling that my jawbone was being pried out of my head by an invisible crow bar. Braces - even transparent ones - hurt like hell. I gritted my teeth and bore it, which only made things worse. But by the following day, the pain had mostly subsided.

Two weeks later, I popped in a new tray, along with couple of painkillers. In addition to the initial discomfort, it took a few weeks for my mouth to adjust to the foreign object that now resided in it. A lisp exorcised by childhood speech therapy reappeared with a vengeance. But few things can stand in the way of me and my need to chat. By week six, my speech was clear and rapid as a babbling brook.

The best thing: No one noticed I was wearing braces. When I told people, they didn't believe me. "Look," I'd joke, removing the plastic tray. "Granny's taking out her dentures." Some were slightly freaked out. Others looked at me with a mixture of envy and distrust. Where were the train tracks, headgear and saliva-soaked retainers? Like a magic diet pill, surely invisible braces were too good to be true.

Apparently not. Six months later, I am halfway through my treatment. I'm happy no one asks me about it, so if you run into me in the next six months, please don't bring it up. And if you must, don't ask how much it cost.

I may be slightly vain and crazy, but at least my name's not Braceface.

lmclaren@globeandmail.com