Day 196

My nine year old has a retainer; or rather she had a retainer until last week. You can see where I am going with this.  I went out of town for work for a few days and left my kids with the super sitter.  Well, super sitter took them to some sort of harvest festival complete with traditional harvest foods like–pizza? And apparently the retainer got sacrificed to the gods of the crops or tomato sauce, and is no more.

Personally, I think the kid is a little young to have a retainer.  It is actually the tail end of some larger dental procedure designed to correct her bite while her palate is still malleable. Or the orthodontist was giving the pediatric dentist kickbacks for referrals; I’m not sure which.

We still have the case, just not the retainer

The original retainer (which she had approximately one month) was included in the price of a larger orthodontia “package” we had prepaid prior to The Simple Year.  Subsequent retainers would have to be purchased.

So, I called the orthodontist’s office and asked how necessary the retainer was in this process, could we do without it?  One thing I am finding is that when I explain about the whole not purchasing thing I often get good suggestions I hadn’t thought of before.  So, I described The Simple Year in great detail- I thought.

Instead, suddenly, her voice got all gooey and in a conspiratorial tone, she offered to put me on a payment plan.

“No, that is not what I meant….oh never mind.”

So chalking it up to health and welfare, I begrudgingly set an appointment.   I told my daughter she was going to have to do some chores to help “work off” the cost of the retainer.  Plus, I had this vague notion that it would give her motivation to keep track of the new one.

The first chore, I told her, would be raking leaves later that week.

The next day we arrived home at dusk and, as if on cue, there was my neighbor raking the leaves in my front yard.  When I got out of the car, she rushed forward, and with excessive cheerfulness said, “I’m going to rake your leaves and he’s going to cut your front yard.” She said gesturing to her husband who appeared to be doing his best to look invisible on the other side of the yard.

“OK, thanks, but…well my daughter lost her retainer,” I said.

“In the yard?” she questioned in a confused voice.

Then I spent some time explaining the situation, which I do a lot of these days– explaining, and called her off her altruistic undertaking.

Maybe not the simplest path, but it is the one that I felt the best.