Last night I took Mara to lacrosse practice. As we were leaving she asked me if we could go to Dick’s to buy her a new mouthguard. She got braces a month ago, and lacrosse season is back, and she needs a new mouthguard. Dick’s is kind of far away and I was tired. I said, “can’t you just get a mouthguard at Academy?” And she said, “yeah, I get them confused.”
I figured Academy isn’t that far away. It’d be a little detour on the way home from practice. So we went to Academy. And it was a nice little detour, and a chance to hang out for a bit with Mara — something we just don’t do often enough anymore.
We did some aisle perusing. We asked an employee where the lacrosse mouthguards could be found. They only had one. We went to the football mouthguard section and Mara found the one she wanted (fruit punch flavored, of course). So we grabbed the mouthguard. For grins we went to the clothing section and I found two pairs of my tried and true running shorts that I thought had been discontinued. So we killed three birds with one stone, and I was glad that Mara asked to go get a mouthguard. We got to hang out, she got a new mouthguard, and I got running shorts that I thought had been discontinued.
We went home, had dinner, and Mara boiled water to form her new mouthguard. She’s 13. She doesn’t require much supervision. She can read instructions. She’s formed a mouthguard before.
The mouthguard got stuck to her braces. She fought relentlessly for 45 minutes to get the mouthguard unstuck from her brackets. No dice. She tried holding hot water in her mouth. She tried prying. She became quiet and weepy. I decided to try to fight fire with fire. I went to the garage and got two difference sized wire cutters. She was able to get the mouthguard unstuck from her back teeth on the right side of her mouth. After some careful amateur orthodontia I was able to cut 1/3 of the mouthguard out, but the rest just wasn’t budging. I had her lay her head in my lap on the living room floor while I, with headlamp on my head and armed with wire snips, tried to see if I could cut out more of the mouthguard without clipping a lip or gums, but there were no dice there either.
We finally settled on her just sleeping with the mouthguard stuck to her braces and Elise would have to take her to the orthodontist in the morning.
Mara got up at 6:00 a.m. I checked on her. She was okay. She said her lips were a little sore. I guess that’s from all of the mouthguard tugging and me moving around her lips to try to cut out the rubbery plastic.
I guess the moral of the story is: RTFM.