The Measure of a Man, or, How I Pulled my Son’s Loose Tooth

My six-year-old son was on his second one, an upper incisor that he had been fidgeting with for weeks. The tooth was definitely loose. I had made three serious attempts to pull it, without success or satisfaction.

He had begun to rotate the tooth, in that masochistic way that little kids experiment with their bodies.

“Ouch!”

“Leave it alone.”

“It’s bleeding now.”

“Leave it alone.”

“Ouch!”

It made him look grotesque. Or inbred. My wife emitted exclamations of disgust as she saw him contort the tooth in new ways.

So it had to come out. But how do these things work? Snakes just shed skins. The antler cycle in deer depends on the photoperiod, a term I just now read about. I wasn’t about to look up how to pull a child’s tooth on wikihow (there is an entry).

No, this dad was going to trust his patriarchal, evolutionary, manly instincts. The main instinct was to not cower before my dad.

The boy’s grandpa, you see, had pulled his first loose tooth as I watched on Skype. I was deployed overseas with the military, and the boy’s mother and my father took over duties that normally would have fallen to me— like pulling teeth.

Now I had to prove that I had the wherewithal to do it. Centerstage.

Stakes were high. My own father, the man against whom I had to measure myself in all things patriarchal, had not only set the bar with the first (perfectly executed) tooth pull, but he was sitting right next to me!

Some fatherly acts are unremarkable quotidians. Others, like teaching a boy to ride a bike, or sending him to his first prostitute (I imagine) are considerably more formative, even determinitive. The very continuity of the patriarchal legacy is expressed in such manly moments of primitive… manliness.

Pulling a tooth from a six-year-old boy’s mouth is one of those moments. It’s practically a blood rite.

Could I do this? It was a dad’s job. A man’s job. I was the boy’s dad, after all, but was I really a man?

My wife winced as I tugged. My son grimaced, but stood undeterred. He wanted that tooth out, and he wanted his dad to make it happen.

Perhaps he was only testing me. Or giving me the opportunity to display my masculinity. To earn the title, Father. To assume my place among men.

My own dad watched with amused curiosity, his attention divided between the epochal moment and a football game (another manly pursuit, to be sure). I would not fail.

I pulled harder. This tooth would be mine! Then, a slip. A pop. It was in my hand! The relationship was consecrated.

The boy was happier than a Geico ad producer given carte blanch to film every “happier than” formulation she could think of.

My son was ecstatic. My wife, relieved. My dad— well, I don’t know exactly what he was thinking. A small amount of pride, I assume. The sort of pride that means, “yeah, I knew you wouldn’t screw this up, not because you’re not a screw up, but because your my son.”

Thus was the legacy passed.

The six-year-old, happy as he was, had little appreciation for how monumental the moment was, or how easily his father could have come just short of the inner sanctum of manly fathers, who from time immemorial, have pulled their son’s teeth with power and pride.

But there is one small inkling of the experience in his six-year-old mind that will emerge when he faces the manly task, his own son expecting his father’s steady hand to do the same.

Maybe I’ll be there.