"Rebel Without a Clause"
write-alike by Gabriel

"Rebel Without a Clause" write-alike by Gabriel

I am Gabriel Parra and I have always struggled with being someone with a weird smile.

As a child, I had a small tooth to the left of my two topmost front teeth. To describe it bluntly, my tooth resembled a tomato on a stick: that is to say, very long, and very delicate. It was a burden that I never enjoyed, as it made me feel insecure about smiling, and every chance I had, I always tried to avoid smiling. It wasn’t until a year ago that I started to smile fully, either.

The process of me getting a full smile that I was proud of showing is one that has taken many years, and has been done throughout almost all of my education career. When I was in second grade, I started using braces, something that most of my classmates wouldn’t need or use until at least three more years in the future. My classmates already had reason enough to ridicule me for my odd smile, but I had just given them an even larger incentive to annoy me.

I was also in and out of the hospital at the time for various different surgeries, some related to my smile, others not. They didn’t make me act any differently, but people weren’t used to seeing someone who was actively in and out of surgery. My teachers also had to adjust to it, and they took it well. But I was still afraid of smiling fully.

The feeling only grew as I went into middle school, where there, school was a melting pot of four different elementary schools, each bringing something different to the school. I had come from the best elementary school in my district, and people always judged us for it. We were the “nerds” of the school, and that put us at a social disadvantage. People were looking for any reason not to like us, and my lack of smiling handed them a reason to not like me on a silver platter.

It took me almost all of middle school for me to come to terms with the fact that while not everyone may like how I look, people are more interested in how you are as a person. This was what carried me through the beginning of freshman year, and thankfully I was spared to fully have to abide by that mantra in my second semester, thanks to the pandemic.

This January, however, I received my smile. I got a crown on my small tooth, filling the hole perfectly, and with it, a smile I was truly happy to see and use. I no longer needed braces, no longer needed to feel insecure about my smile. I could shine my smile and the world would smile back. There was nothing that could stop me, and I am eternally grateful for my new smile, a way to get back at all of my former tormenters. Who’s smiling now?