So I work for a company that is in the business of fixing teeth and has a straightforward business philosophy: a smile is the first thing you notice on someone's face, and first impressions are last impressions. Hence, as long as there are people with imperfect smiles, our product will sell. Invisible braces can fix smiles invisibly!

Sounds simple right? Well, go ask a dentist.

Talk to an orthodontist about Lady Diana and they would tell you that the queen of hearts had a malocclusion (defect in her teeth) which her orthodontist wasn’t qualified enough to fix. (If only Dodi al Fayed was a dentist, she would still be among us. Sigh!) Similarly, we were in fits when our very competent instructor of orthodontics in one of those elementary training sessions informed us that the then miss universe has a class II molar relationship (a defect in which your molars occlude slightly off from the normal). Imagine! Here is a woman the world dotes on for her immaculate pulchritude and all the dentist sees is an imperfect molar relationship. To top that, you can’t even see a person's molars directly - unless you are her personal dentist, her kinky lover or her one-eyed breathing toothbrush, for lack of a more plausible example. You can just guess her occlusion state from her facial profile, and that too only if you are a very ambitious dentist.

Before that enlightening 'el momento de la verdad', I had always wondered why the movie 'The Whole Nine Yards' suggested that dentists are suicidal. I watched it in the first place because I read in a review that it was about a dentist with some problems and I thought since I have gotten my teeth into the tooth business, I might as well know what problems dentists face. It turns out that: a hit man living next door to you, an unfaithful wife, and the fact that the gorgeous Natasha Henstridge (with those oh-so-high-cheekbones) attracts you but happens to be the hit man’s wife are not the routine problems in dentistry. Anyway let’s not get carried away. This is not a review of ‘The Whole Nine Yards’. This is a question far more serious and it requires serious psycho-analysis.

So why are dentists suicidal? The answer to this important philosophical question (right up there with 'Why do we exist?" and "What is the purpose of life?") dawned upon me - like the perfect smile we aspire to sell - after that first week of orthodontic training.

Life has been somewhat miserable ever since.

I mean, come on, how many normal people would notice that kaly-the-famous-bugbuster (one of my team members), has a missing canine and hence a shifted midline? None! (Poor soul! Never even noticed it himself before that damned training) Or that cute little beggar boy - who looks like someone we know - in Shadman market near the truck that sells cheap Chinese food has a prognathous maxilla and proclined upper incisors and so doesn’t look so cute anymore. You simply cannot observe these naked realities unless you know orthodontics - and then, once you find out, it just drives you insane. It’s like wearing those x-ray vision goggles that turn your world into a graveyard of skeletons and make you feel like a character in an evil-dead movie. And then you start laughing like mad, because come on - those evil-dead movies are funny!

And its not like we, the software engineers, did not have enough problems of our own already - Have you heard that joke about this female software engineer's remarks on her prospects after hearing about the unusually high 1/10, female to male ratio of software engineers: "The odds are good but the goods are odd". (If you haven’t heard it you haven’t met me. Its one of the very few clean jokes I know and so I tell it to everyone I meet. People who know me would vouch for that.) - Well we have already been branded as ‘odd goods’ and now the choices are more limited than ever before. I hear myself saying:

“No mom I cannot marry this girl because she has an abnormally raised palatal dome in what otherwise looks like a perfect face to you.”

Or,

“Yes the girl is pretty and educated but does she have an ideal overbite?" "What? Yes? (with an expression of stark disbelief) Ok how about overjet?"

This is how badly our standards have been elevated.

So yes the dentists have every right to claim the title of being 'suicidal'. I always thought the Software Engineers with that special set of problems they have would win that honour - but no. You win, we lose. True, that we spend our lives with a machine (I watched 'The Whole Nine Yards' on my monitor in case you are wondering) and that makes us psychotic or at least neurotic in most cases; and true that our lives revolve around generating and killing those slimy-green, obstinate, creepy creatures called bugs.

However, at least the visions of imperfect smiles don’t haunt us at night! (Or do they?)

Luckily, my dentist friends (and all others bothered by defective smiles), imperfect smiles are not the end of the road. I can prognosticate that the only real competition ever to the invisible braces we make will be a set of goggles, unlike those x-ray vision goggles, that will make everyone's smile seem perfect. So even if the perfect smile does not exist, you will one day be able to buy those goggles and assume that every person you come across has a perfect class I molar relationship with ideal overjet, overbite, Andrew’s norm and what not. Those goggles will be to the old fashioned six cans of beer what invisible braces are to traditional braces (obviously without any hangover whatsoever).

As for the others, in the meantime, should you ever come across a dentist without those much-needed goggles, keep your lips sealed and your jaws in as perfect a state of occlusion as possible. For who knows, they might just discover that the mesial cusp of your upper first molar does not land as nicely into the buccal groove of the lower first as it should - hence making the lives of all concerned, miserable.

p.s. I know what I can expect after this when I face a dentist: Oligodontia i.e. loss of several teeth in my dentition.

Glossary

Prognathous - Having a projecting jaw.

Maxilla – Upper Jaw.

Proclined – flared.

Palatal dome – Upper surface of the mouth

Overbite – Vertical overlapping of upper teeth over lower teeth

Overjet – Horizontal projection of upper teeth beyond the lower teeth.

Mesial – Towards the midline of teeth.