Smile Like A Child
There is one question I almost always get asked when someone finds out I’m a dentist. “So like, have you been totally checking out my teeth this whole time?” The answer to that question is...100% yes. I’m sorry, I’m a teeth guy. A smile guy. It gives a whole new meaning to “my eyes are up here.”
What precisely am I looking at during that quick glance? There are so many biometric cues that my brain absorbs in fractions of a second. To the lay person there are 3 types of smiles. The first of these is the “Great Smile.” These are the smiles that are putting points in the win column. We think about these smiles long after we see them. These are the real smiles that are infectious. We crave these smiles.
The second type of smile is...you guessed it, the “Not So Great Smile.” These have the opposite effect of Great Smiles. They work against their owners and are memorable for the wrong reasons. Lastly, we have the 3rd type of smile. This smile is neither “Great” nor “Not So Great.” This smile does not get noticed. This is the “Meh Smile.”
This sounds a little shallow I know, so maybe I can dig my way back into your good graces here. I am not a lay person. I have chosen over the last 9 years to study every nook and cranny of the human mouth and have looked at thousands. I mentioned biometric cues earlier. Biometry refers to the measurement and analysis of people's unique physical characteristics.
These cues include the gingiva (gums), the lips, the shape, shade, and contour of the teeth, the cleanliness, the smell, or lack thereof, and the eyes. That’s right, I mentioned a Great Smile is one that’s genuine and the eyes inform us of a smiles sincerity. These cues are like the paints on the artist’s palette that when mixed together form an altogether unique and individual picture. This picture we would all agree is greater than the sum of its parts, the individual colors themselves.
Now I’m going to give you my definition of a Great Smile. The smile that will catch my attention, in the right way, is the one that’s healthy and genuine. This is the smile of a child that is loved. The healthy part is easy, brush and floss daily, see your hygienist regularly, and make smart decisions when it comes to your diet. Making it real can be the challenge sometimes.
Knowing what I know now, I fully appreciate how extremely fortunate I was to have a Mom that was concerned and involved with my oral health as well as the oral health of my siblings. Brushing our teeth morning and night was a big deal around the Miller house. And without fail every 6 months we would load up the Chevy Comfort Craft Van and head into town for our routine teeth cleanings and exams.
These trips were pretty exciting for a variety of reasons. One, we got to miss school. And not just a little bit of school, we had to travel to see the dentist and there were 5 of us so it was an all day affair. Reason number two, we got to go to Pizza Hut and each choose a song out of the Juke-Box. (Metallica’s Black Album Anyone?) We would hope and pray that we didn’t have any cavities, because we didn’t want the precious Pizza Hut experience to be ruined by numb lips and tongues.
I remember sitting in those dental chairs for what seemed like hours studying the wall paper. The wall paper consisted of photographs blown up to the size of the wall in the dental operatory. One room had horses, another room had forests, and the final room had lakes and streams. Included with all of these however, were amazing mountain views in the background. I realize now that all of these photographs were taken in Northwest Montana.
Being from the dusty and barren high-desert plains of Northeast Arizona, these pictures might as well of been taken on Mars. I was transfixed by the clear and clean water. Fascinated by the snow-dusted mountains, I could just imagine the crispness of the air. The horses I was lukewarm on. Don’t send me any hate mail horse lovers.
Then the stars aligned and my family drove from Arizona to Edmonton, Alberta with an extended stop in the Flathead Valley and Glacier Park. I could not, under any circumstances, peel my face away from the car window. Lakes, Streams, Rivers, and Mountains OH MY!! This was the place. It was just like the pictures in the dental office, only without that dental office smell and the inability to move my lips.
The violent roar of Upper MacDonald Creek was the soundtrack to an 11 year old’s decision to come back to this amazing place as often as possible and to someday make it home. Ironically it all started in a dental chair in Northern Arizona, where I was making sure to keep my smile healthy because one day I was going to live in Montana, where the smiles are always real.
Keep it Real Folks.
Read Smile Like a Child by Dr. John F. Miller, DDS in 406 Woman magazine.