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"  &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t be offended, but I think you should get your teeth fixed,&amp;quot; a friend said to me a few months ago. I apparently had the worst teeth he&amp;#039;d ever seen\u2014which came as a surprise to me. Yes, I still had three baby teeth holding on for dear life after 32 years. Sure, the occasional onlooker asked why a nice girl like me was missing so many teeth. Had I been in a horrible fight? Was it drugs? Maybe a hidden hillbilly past? It wasn&amp;#039;t exactly the look I was going for, but I still thought it was charming. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re baby teeth,&amp;quot; I would say, proudly pulling back my jowl to offer a peek.  As a child, I watched my mom go through the same thing. She had baby teeth that stubbornly stuck around until her mid-thirties. I chalked up my own mini-ivories as coming with the territory. It was a quirk that added character. After all, being mistaken for having teeth missing was quite different from actually having teeth missing.  And the whole situation was a bit mysterious. The amazed wonderment and delighted glee from dental professionals, coupled with very little anecdotal information on why I was a grown-up with baby teeth, added a certain mystique to the whole situation. As far as I can tell, though, it is hereditary\u2014and caused by a genetic defect of sorts (add that to the list). I didn&amp;#039;t necessarily want to keep my baby teeth, but there were no solutions that didn&amp;#039;t seem out of control. While I wasn&amp;#039;t attached to them, I didn&amp;#039;t feel the motivation to do what it took to get rid of them. But my friend gently asking whether I had a drug-addled past was the straw that broke the camel&amp;#039;s back.  Dentist after dentist after orthodontist after specialist all proposed the same solution: braces. And years of them. One even suggested I attach a miniature weight to my upper jaw to slowly entice the mature tooth down from its resting place somewhere in my right sinus. Medieval? Yes. Acceptable? No. Years of braces at my age? No way. Invisalign was not even an option as my case was too severe, too serious. Basically, I was resigned to a life with my little buddies until one magical day, when I crossed paths with Dr. Michael Apa, a cosmetic dentist based in New York City. He was supposed to be the very best; he worked on scads of famous people and could fix any issue, big or small. Even though I did not believe the hype, I made an appointment anyway. Why not? After sending along photos of my smile with detailed shots of my particular issues, I was reassured that he could handle it.  Dr. Apa&amp;#039;s office was decorated with autographed photos of various celebrities and photos of himself with a perfect smile on different magazines. It was clean, modern, uptown\u2014impressive.  The office manager immediately gave me an iPad presentation of previous cases. From pretty ladies made prettier to some truly disgusting people rendered human again, it was inspiring. I then met with Dr. Apa, who took in the idiosyncrasies of my teeth and laid his diagnosis on me. I had baby teeth, yes, but my smile was also overly narrow and could use some flushing out. He had the utmost confidence, and I left full of anticipation and excitement. I was going to be head over heels in love with my smile from the moment I had my temporaries on, which was to happen the next day. And then the next day came. The appointment involved hours of intense dental work. My teeth were filed down to scary sharp pegs (don&amp;#039;t look at yourself at this point, warned my mom, who it turns out had secretly got the same procedure done years earlier\u2014I blame the secrecy on WASP repression). At the very end, the dentist passed me a hand mirror and there was a ventriloquist dummy looking back at me. I looked like I had a huge mouthful of dentures, and even though this was the temporary part, I was horrified.  I then went to an oral surgeon, the lovely Dr. Gary Ruth, who was to pull my top right baby tooth. He was kind and made me feel as comfortable as possible while ripping a tooth out of my head. And while it was a little baby, it certainly was holding on with all its might. I left, unable to talk and went home to a big bowl of applesauce\u2014the only thing I could eat.  The following day, I went back to Dr. Apa to discuss what I liked and what I didn&amp;#039;t. I felt a bit like Gary Busey but was reassured that Dr. Apa had great aesthetics and I was lucky to be in his chair. He usually worked on celebrities and royalty, you know. He put in temporaries while the actual veneers were sculpted in porcelain one at a time. The next week, while I anxiously waited for my delicate new teeth, was hard. Eating was difficult, my teeth hurt, and I had a lisp. But no one really noticed, in a good way.  And when the big day finally came, Dr. Apa removed the temporaries and applied the specially molded, hand-sculpted veneers to my front teeth one by one. This time, when he passed the mirror my way, I saw a perfect smile looking back at me. My teeth were straight...and I had all of them.   Watch the Video: Dr. Apa gives Melissa a brilliant new smile "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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