Recollections of an impressionable 12-year-old boy

She was the prettiest girl I'd ever seen.

It didn't matter that she wore very strong glasses in an austere black frame like Marco's. And braces. With headgear that looked as though it had been cobbled together from scrapyard spares. A chromed bumper in front of her mouth was attached to padded beige plastic fenders over her cheeks. Each had a row of shiny buttons and rivets that fastened them to a kind of bridle made from navy blue seatbelt webbing.

It was monstrous compared with the only other one I'd seen before.

I hadn't been able to restrain myself from sneaking peeks at an older girl in the car parked next to ours. Her teeth were so much too big for her that her lips didn't close properly. We grew into clothes, shoes and bicycles. So it seemed reasonable that it might also apply to dentures that could come loose like Granny Kate's. That explained the strap like the ones Bob and I had to wear to hold our glasses whenever there was any chance of them flying off