taming the tongue
a tale of jail, forgery, and skulls
Y’all know I like to write about God and grief and love and loss and motherhood. I also bear the heavy burden of thinking I am funny. At this time, three children under three is constraining both my REM sleep and my deeper theological ponderings, so I come to you now with a lighter tale.
I’ll start by saying that none of this is my fault. Maybe my parents used the wrong bottles when I was an infant.1 Maybe they let me suck my thumb for too long. Maybe they didn’t give me an entire lamb shank to gnaw on when I was 7 months old, as the pediatric feeding specialists yammer on about these days.
Be it nature or nurture, my face became ground zero for a collision of errors in my jaw and teeth development. It all goes back to my tongue, which never quite knew where to go. The results? A narrow palate. A tongue thrust. And an open bite. When I was younger, I had a pretty exaggerated lisp, trouble with my Rs and Ws, and was a bit of a mouth breather.
There is a home video from sometime in early elementary school where my brothers and I are recreating a skit from that summer’s VBS. “Sam Shark here, investigative reporter,” I say to the camera. “We are coming to you live from the case of the counterfeit character!”
But it sounds more like this: Tham Thark heuw, investigative, weporter. We are coming to you live from the case of the countewfeit chawactew.
At a young age, talking like that is kind of cute. But after a while, your public school teacher flags you and you’re spending an hour a week with the district speech pathologist.
Week in and week out, from kindergarten through 5th grade, I sat with this kind woman who sought to set me and my tongue on the right path. Other children with my same sound struggles would join us, and we’d all R-R-R-R-R like a rooster. As the months went by, these comrades of mine would check all the necessary boxes, and the day would come where we’d celebrate their final session with a cookie. These brothers-in-arms would formally graduate from speech and return to normal class time. At 7 years old, it was the closest I’d get to saying goodbye to a buddy out on parole.
My situation, however, was more of a work release. I never officially graduated. Perhaps this is related to the fact that instead of actually completing my exercises at home with my mom or dad, I would occasionally have a friend forge my parents’ initials on my speech homework. (C’mon, initials? If a third-grader can forge something it’s too easy.)
So yes, even by 5th grade, I had not proven myself as the speaker I needed to be. I’d like to think I was meant to be born in Barcelona, where a little th goes a long way. But I was here in Texas, and the middle school did not have an on-campus speech pathologist, so they just kinda let me age out.
Fast forward to high school. One day I come home to a letter from Coppell Independent School District confessing that they had recently been made aware that the speech pathologist at my elementary was never formally licensed. (The guilt of my own dalliance with forgery was lessened in light of this revelation.)
This woman had been promptly fired, and a bonafide was hired in her stead. After much apologizing, this letter offered me the opportunity to drive myself—now 16—to the elementary school every week to take a speech class once again. This time, it would be sanctioned by the State of Texas. And maybe God.
I, ever proud, declined. I had pulled myself up by my bootstwaps bootstraps and was doing fine talking like a normal person, thank you.
I made it through college without being flagged by any more teachers or medical professionals, so I considered any speech impediments a thing of the past. I was an adult now. And I was employed!
Remember the obituary job? Yes, for a few years I read thousands of obituaries and summarized them for publication in my university’s alumni magazine.
In addition to the magazine publishing short obituaries for every deceased former student, Texas A&M also has a tradition called the “Worldwide Roll Call for the Absent.” You can read about it here—yes, it’s very special—but my point is not what the WWRC is, but rather that it is a phrase with entirely too many W’s and R’s for someone like me.
It took a feat of superhuman strength every time I was forced to say it—something possible only under extreme duress, requiring diligent focus.
All too often I would be on the phone with a sweet 90-year-old widow of a WWII veteran: “Yes, I loved learning about your husband’s service while reading the info you sent in for his obituary. We will include him in next month’s magazine and I’ll be sure to send you extra copies. And I also wanted to make sure you know about our…” — here I’d audibly gulp and drop to 0.25x speed—
“World
Wide
Roll
Call…”2
It was around the same time as this job that I began going to a new dentist. I told him—and he could clearly see—that none of my front teeth touch when my jaw is closed. I joked that this can make it hard to eat a thin crust pizza, for I can just pull it right out between my teeth. He seemed less than amused, but agreed that yes, I had a pronounced “open bite,” likely due to a tongue thrust.3
The dentist suggested that before we try to fix my bite with orthodontia, we needed to get my tongue under control. Back to speech therapy it was.
“Uh, I really only know a speech path that works with kids,” he admitted sheepishly. “But try her number and see if she’d help you.”
I did, and Deborah said she would have me. I asked if her license was real or forged. (It was real!)
When the day of our first appointment came, I pulled up to the address she’d given me, and found myself in front of an indoor playground. It turns out her office—if we can call it that—was in the closet of this children’s establishment, across from the ball pit and sensory table.
The bored teenager working the front desk looked surprised to see me as I walked in, a lone adult, no 4 year old in tow.
“Hi,” I started. “Um. I’m here to see the speech pathologist?”
“She’s in the back closet,” the teen told me. “But you need to take your shoes off to enter the play space. Do you have socks?”
I looked down at my sandaled feet. “No, I didn’t kn—”
She cut me off with a sigh. “Then you’ll need to buy our socks. They’re two dollars.”
Now two dollars poorer and with my bare feet covered, I walked the 20 feet to the closet. She was with a client so I waited in a child-size chair until the 5 year old she was working with walked out with his mom.
In case I haven’t painted a clear enough picture for you, here’s a screenshot from her website of what I, a twenty-something, was about to get up to:
I spent a few months with Deborah. I wish I could remember more of her idiosyncracies, more highlights from our time together. It felt like an SNL skit in our little chairs, the toys all around the room. The main thing I recall is how incredibly excited she was that I could…speak? Give feedback? Communicate like the adult that I was? “I’m so used to kids who don’t give me anything back,” she’d say.
Happy to help, ma’am. I live to serve.
Once again, I did not graduate, per se, from her tutelage. Instead, I packed up my socks, moved to Dallas, and abandoned Deborah to the toddlers.
After a year or so in Dallas, I found myself in a new dentist’s chair, giving him my spiel. I know I have an open bite and I need to stop my tongue thrust first before we can fix my teeth in any lasting way.
He nodded along, but suggested I go ahead and visit an orthodontist just to get a different opinion.
“This is the best orthodontist in Dallas,” he told me, handing me a card. “She’s incredible.”
I scheduled a free consultation, and by the time I was driving downtown to her office I had resigned myself to the fact that if anyone could make the best of adult braces, it would be me. I love a good bit. I love self-deprecating humor. And here was a chance to have a built-in-bit wired to my teeth? Peak comedy.
We would all laugh about it—there’s Hannah with the braces! She’s so funny!—for the year or two it would take to close my bite and restore my pizza-eating capabilities.
I was—quite literally—chuckling to myself as I got out of my car and walked into the office. Braces! This is gonna kill in stand up one day.
Well, the best orthodontist in Dallas had other plans. Psychotic plans.
This lady was—no exaggeration—rubbing her hands together in glee as she looked over my x-rays. “I know just what we can do,” she said, a menacing glint in her eye.
She sat at her computer for a few minutes, rapidly typing and clicking away, before turning the screen to face me. What I saw was a recreation of my skull, complete with my open bite. Nothing too crazy yet. But then she pressed play, and a little animation began.
It did not show braces being attached to my teeth. Instead, the first scene was the upper part of my jaw being detached from my head—my palate and top teeth completely popping off like a lego.
Here is a similar image I found on Google:
I wanted a funny little bit to joke about with the pals. She wanted to chop my skull!
The animation continued. Once my palate was free from the God-given confines of my skeletal system and feeling a cool breeze for the first time, it would be stretched to the right size. Then she would remove a few teeth that were “too small,” screw some new, fake teeth into this free-floating jaw of mine, then reattach it to my face.
Next, my jaw would be wired shut for weeks to heal. Then, and only then, would I get braces.
When the body horror animation stopped, she looked at me with a smile. “It’s really impressive what we are able to do now. I’d love to be a part of this surgery.”
I almost threw up.
Gathering myself, I posed a question: “And what would happen,” I paused and made sure I had eyes on the exit, “if I didn’t do this? What would eventually happen to my teeth?”
She shrugged. “Your molars will just get worn down as they take all the force of your chewing. You’d probably just need crowns eventually.”
“Ah. Okay. Thank you. Let me think about it and get back to you,” I said, already making my way out the door.
In the car I immediately called my husband— “She wanted to CHOP MY SKULL!” I shouted.
“I think you should go with the crowns,” he replied.
Later, when I rehashed the story with a friend, she mentioned that a girl we went to college with had had a similar surgery. I texted her to ask about it. Her reply was immediate, and this, too, is not exaggerated:
Hannah, that surgery was truly the hardest thing I have ever gone through physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It was excruciating. But I know sometimes it’s necessary. How much pain are you in right now?
I’m not in any pain. I texted back. I just can’t eat pizza and I look a little funny from the side.
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD, DO NOT DO IT.
Okay, I replied. You don’t have to tell me twice!
The sadist orthodontist called me every few weeks in the months that followed, wanting to know if I would move forward with the plan. I fear she may have framed my x-rays and put them in her room. But after repeated no’s, she got the message.
It’s now a few years since the animation from hell. So, where are we now?
By God’s grace, my skull remains unchopped. I have not yet needed crowns, and my lisp only comes out every blue moon. Thin crust pizza continues to get a little wily at times, but nevertheless, she persisted.
I suppose it all comes back to the tongue. As always, in the end, we must return to the Bible. James was right when he wrote that: “every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.”4
In other words, I’m toast.
They are veterans of three under 2 (18-month-old then twins!) and for that, I salute them.
(Speaking of R’s and W’s— Helen Roy recently shared this funny Note
and all I could think was I…simply would never be able to say that. I’ve actually begun walking around the house and trying to pronounce “Aurora Roy” when I need to be humbled. God bless Helen and all her current and future children, whatever their names.)
I was talking about this at a friend’s baby shower shortly after this dentist visit. A girl I’d never met said, “tongue thrust? Bet your husband loves that.” Eek!
James 3:7-8
You are one of my favorite writers of all time. Hannah, this is too funny! We have had to do so much speech therapy around these parts: that darn "world" is asking a lot of our tongues with the "r" followed by an "l."
“When I was younger” okay 😂