By some cruel twist of fate, the day I got braces coincided with fried-chicken day, and the moment I bit into that crispy chicken breast with my newly metallic teeth was like biting into a stick of dynamite that had been dipped in burning acid and wrapped in angry bees. My entire mouth exploded in pain, because apparently, when you get braces, your teeth and gums freak out about how everything is changing and nothing will ever be the same, and decide to set themselves on fire the second you try to use them for their intended purpose. Defeated, I set aside the chicken and tried my luck with a biscuit, but my teeth were like, “Nice try, asshole, but you might as well get used to never eating delicious baked breads ever again,” and then I tried the mashed potatoes and gravy, but even they proved too painful to swish around. So I vowed to jump in front of the school bus the next morning and end it all for good.

Except I didn’t, because I was far too scared of moving vehicles and also our bus driver, so I just persisted in agony for the next six years with a mouth full of metal that made eating the most difficult thing in the world.

But here’s the thing. Braces weren’t even the worst part of having braces. The worst part was all the preparation required for getting braces, because apparently you can’t just slap those babies in and call it a day, you have to get your mouth ready with a whole host of awful procedures that exist for the sole purpose of creating moments that will scar you well into adulthood and make you, once again, fear food entirely.

The first thing they do when they assess you for braces is a thing dentists called impressions. Impressions are a process in which the dentist fills a tiny round metal tray with a glob of clay putty he scooped from the bottom of an abandoned marsh, and smashes it against the roof of your mouth to get a 3-D rendering of your teeth. To make it worse, the dentist people try to flavor the putty to taste like bubble gum, but really, it tastes like it was made by an alien who has never tasted bubble gum before, which is to say, it tastes like the inside of a recently douched anus. Inevitably, the dentist will overfill the putty tray, which means, while he presses it against the roof of your mouth, half of the stuff goes down your throat and tickles that part of your tonsils that I like to call the Violent Vomit Button.