Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Braces: Once Hot or Not?
I recently had an argument with ambiguator and several of his friends in which I apparently lost, but a recent parenthetical aside from midwestgrrl may suggest that perhaps there is support for my side of the argument yet. The situation was this:
Over several rounds of beers at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge it came to my attention that one of the friends had still had braces when he started college, poor soul. After we spent a good deal of time mulling over that horror, I mentioned that I had been lucky to get braces back in fifth grade when they were still considered cool. At this point, everybody looked upon me with utter condescension. Braces, I was informed, were NEVER cool. I attempted to support my thesis that back in late elementary school braces were actually very cool by characterizing braces as a rite of passage we generally associated with older (read: middle school) kids ergo braces made you seem older and therefore cooler. I then made the mistake of mentioning that at some point in fourth grade I may have even fashioned a paper clip into a make-shift retainer just to see what it was like. Well, let me just say, that admission led to much ridicule, and the subject was summarily closed.
Well, I was pleased to discover an ostensibly offhanded comment that may actually lend support to the pro-braceswereoncecool camp in Midwestgrrl's recent ruminations on the virtues of Junior Mints (an excellent candy, might I add).
At any rate, I tend to disregard the afforementioned peanut gallery's position on cool since they all seem to maintain that the rat tail was the pinnacle of cool back in the disputed era. Silly, silly boys.
Over several rounds of beers at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge it came to my attention that one of the friends had still had braces when he started college, poor soul. After we spent a good deal of time mulling over that horror, I mentioned that I had been lucky to get braces back in fifth grade when they were still considered cool. At this point, everybody looked upon me with utter condescension. Braces, I was informed, were NEVER cool. I attempted to support my thesis that back in late elementary school braces were actually very cool by characterizing braces as a rite of passage we generally associated with older (read: middle school) kids ergo braces made you seem older and therefore cooler. I then made the mistake of mentioning that at some point in fourth grade I may have even fashioned a paper clip into a make-shift retainer just to see what it was like. Well, let me just say, that admission led to much ridicule, and the subject was summarily closed.
Well, I was pleased to discover an ostensibly offhanded comment that may actually lend support to the pro-braceswereoncecool camp in Midwestgrrl's recent ruminations on the virtues of Junior Mints (an excellent candy, might I add).
At any rate, I tend to disregard the afforementioned peanut gallery's position on cool since they all seem to maintain that the rat tail was the pinnacle of cool back in the disputed era. Silly, silly boys.
