Toothy Tune -- Think Big Dentist Bills When You See A Singer Sing

THE OTHER DAY I was watching two sisters on television singing a duet. They looked like they were from California, with golden tans and lots of blond hair. They were both beautiful and I suddenly realized that I was having unnatural thoughts about them.

"Good Lord," I thought as I watched the sisters, "their parents must have spent a fortune on their teeth!"

It takes a parent who has spent a fortune on his own children's teeth to appreciate the amount of money required to get an even row of pearly whites like these sister singers.

After watching singers on television over the years, I have come to the conclusion that most singers have very large mouths and their parents had very large bank accounts. You rarely ever see a singer with a mouth with pursed lips that looks like they have been sucking lemons. No, you see singers with big mouths and big teeth. And when these singers actually open their mouths and sing, they like to show all their teeth, front and back, and maybe even their tonsils.

These two sisters were following in that tradition. When the sisters opened their mouths to belt out a tune, they had what might be called "singer's mouth." This is a mouth that seems to have a double hinge.

There's the difference between regular peoples' mouths and singer's mouth. Most people can talk - and even sing - without you getting a glimpse of more than their front teeth.

OK, maybe you might be able to occasionally see their molars, but only if they yawn in your face when you are telling them some story about your childhood in Everett. Like Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston does sometimes. But Mrs. Johnston is from California and in keeping with that state's tradition, she has a healthy set of choppers on her.

While the sister singers I was watching on television were also from California, they had the added attraction of having singer's mouth. In other words, when they opened their mouths, there was a hole in the middle of their faces that went from the bottom of their chins to their foreheads. And yes, you could see all of their teeth and even their tonsils.

But here is the thing that got my attention: Their teeth were perfectly white and they were perfectly straight. In the pre-Mrs. Johnston days, I might have noticed that the sisters were also beautiful, but now I just thought of the dental bills those girls' poor parents must have paid to get those straight and white teeth.

Plus not only were their teeth straight and white, but they were huge teeth. I mean these teeth looked like the keys on a grand piano. I had to wonder if their parents had to pay extra to have their daughters' teeth enlarged like those teeth.

"Your daughters, of course, need braces," the dentist would tell the parents, "but while I'm in there and working on their mouths, do you want me to stretch their teeth so they are double the normal size?"

"Is that possible?" the parents would ask.

"For a few thousand dollars more," the dentist would say, "we can make their teeth look like they should be growing on a walrus."

When we had braces put on the Johnston children (which is required by state law now), we didn't sign up for the stretching option. For one thing, the cost of regular braces is about the same as a new car. If you add on the California teeth-stretching option, you are talking about enough money to buy a new car with its own driver.

We told the dentist we would go for the normal braces, which would only put us in the poorhouse. We didn't need the teeth stretching, I said.

"The kids can't carry a tune," I told the dentist.

Steve Johnston is a reporter for The Seattle Times. Paul Schmid is a Times artist.