Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/11/teen-forced-dentist-to-remove.html
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I hear his aggressive, take-charge attitude led to a lucrative career as an independent contractor.
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Hard to blame the kid, lots of kids who don’t strictly need braces are forced to get them by thier parents and they arent super pleasant.
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I’m going to hypothesize that his teeth remained the least of his problems.
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My memory of braces was torturous. I would’ve given almost anything to be rid of them, too. Even bit the ortho, they were so painful. I can sympathize with the kid’s plight, but not his solution.
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And the article is posted today because…
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On the one hand, its not exactly topical.
On the other hand it isn’t about trump, climate change, or covid.
Net assessment: win
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I’m curious how he, and his teeth, turned out.
I’ll guess crooked - just like his methods. 
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This may seem inexcusable at worst and idiotic at best, but on the other hand, braces can hurt. Constant pain and the stresses it induces, such as extreme lack of sleep, can (and WILL, eventually) break anyone. Just ask Torquemada or the CIA how that works 
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I’m curious to hear the kid’s side of it.
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I posted it because I found it interesting. Fortunately for me, that’s the only filter I need. I’d imagine the same is true for the folks at Weird Universe where I saw it first.
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You might like this book. My uncle gave it to me for Christmas once. It is full of weird stories. Some of them fantastic and possibly paranormal (like the missing flight into the Bermuda Triangle) and some just weird coincidences or people doing odd things.
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They weren’t shoot-someone-bad, but I did always wonder why it was so important for my braces to have gum-shredding sharp edges and to stick out a full half inch from the tooth. They couldn’t do the same job with smooth, flattened, rounded metal? Really?
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When I was getting my braces put on I thought about jumping out of the chair and trying to jump out the window of the orthodontist’s office. I hated having braces and it seemed like i had them for such a long time.
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He turned to a life of crime but his teeth went straight.
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Oh please if you fall into the “don’t strictly need” it category then they aren’t going to be that bad. I had orthodontics for 4 years. I had all four of my 2nd premolars removed before having the braces attached, which for a teenager was far more painful than the braces themselves. Along the way we threw in bands for a year or so and about 18 months worth of head gear. I still have a permanent retainer on the inside of my bottom teeth. Yes I have straight teeth and in addition the removal of the premolars allowed my wisdom teeth to come in fully. I spent many of nights eating jello or soup, but at no point did I think about taking a pair of pliers and ripping them off (or forcing someone to do it at gun point.)
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I feel ambivalent about this.
This kid was in my eyes old enough to have some autonomy over their own body and medical decisions. Here in NL it would be illegal (…) to force a child of 12 or older to have braces if they clearly stated an objection.
Forced bracers sounds like a kind of torture to me and this gives him a good reason to use certain levels of violence to make it stop. It’t called self defence.
OTOH pulling a gun on a random orthodontist was maybe a bit too extreme.
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BTW, this is the same Charles Berlitz of language school fame. He got a little weird in his later years.
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Braces have improved so much. My brother really suffered 50 years ago. My kids, who had terribly aligned teeth, wore braces for quite a few years and had little to complain about.
I was lucky in that I learned to smile with my straight teeth showing, and my crooked teeth hidden.
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In the US they are called “crooked teeth”; over here, in the UK, they are called, “teeth”. 
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Are you under the impression BB is a current affairs site?
Pesco probably posted it today because he stumbled across it today.
Maybe?
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