And worst of all, it was virtually impossible to eat anything even closely resembling solid food the entire time that thing was up there. My only means of nourishment was to rip all of my food into tiny pieces, delicately put them on my tongue like I was feeding a hummingbird, and swish them slowly around my mouth until they were melty enough to swallow. If I took too big of a bite, or swished too quickly, the food would somehow find its way up into the expander, and lodge itself in the tiny space between the metal and the roof of my mouth. And then I’d have to spend hours trying to effectively suck my own mouth to get the food unstuck, or somehow jam a knife in the tiny space in the front of the thing to push the food out the tiny space in the back. It was, as they say, a disaster waiting to happen.

And disaster struck, as these things always tend to do, during my brother’s surprise sixteenth birthday party. Perhaps, subconsciously, I simply could not stand to attend an event at which I was not the sole center of attention. Or perhaps, on some deeper level, this milestone reminded me of my own mortality and my body decided to simply end it all before it had the chance to get any worse. But more than likely, disaster struck because we had made the mistake of combining a high-pressure social gathering with steaming-hot appetizers and a minor orthodontic surgical device.

Here’s what happened.

I didn’t particularly like parties as a kid, especially when they weren’t for me, and especially when they were surprise parties I wasn’t told about because I couldn’t be trusted to keep a secret. If I’d had my way, I would’ve spent the evening in my bedroom, playing with my Pokémon cards in peace, descending only to retrieve a slice of ice cream cake, which I would’ve dragged back to my room to swish slowly in my mouth piece by tiny piece. Parties always felt like too much effort, mostly because I was ten, and didn’t have the stamina to sustain more than three minutes of small talk. You know what everybody asks you when you’re ten? “How is school going?” How the fuck do you think school is going? I’m in the fifth grade. I colored a map today, and some kid swallowed an eraser. I don’t have time to be answering this garbage.

But of course, my mother forced me to attend because that’s the only way she would give me cake, and I had no choice but to make conversation, or whatever conversation I could muster with a chunk of metal dentistry filling most of my throat.