Wishing Pain For My Son?

At my son Evan's soccer game this past Saturday, a boy on the other team kicked the ball hard - straight into Evan's face.  It was unintentional and there was no 'damage'.  Nonetheless, Evan reacted like most 5-year-olds would, he started bawling.  Sarah carried him off the field and he sobbed in her arms for a good five minutes.  I don't begrudge him that.  I have no doubt I would have done the same when I was five.  Still, the event made me wonder, at what age and under what circumstances is it appropriate to tell my son it's time to 'man up'?

To put things in context, I have to admit (not brag) that I have an enormous pain tolerance.  Because of that, I don't necessarily have the greatest sympathy when someone is crying over something that doesn't involve squirting blood or broken bones.  I don't particularly like that fact about myself, but it's who I am.  And like most fathers, I like the idea of my son developing some of my better personality features and avoiding some of my worse personality features.  The question is, what is good and what is bad in this situation?

I wasn't born tough.  I don't have any reason to believe that I naturally have any more or less pain tolerance than the next person.  Life experience and having three older brothers made me tough.  My brothers weren't particularly violent toward me, but I always felt like I needed to prove myself worthy of hangin' with the big kids.  And hangin' with the big kids sometimes meant the little kid got hurt.

My very first trip to the emergency room came when I was 6-years-old.  I was playing in the basement when I was called upstairs.  I fell on the concrete steps and split my chin open.  Eight stitches later I was good to go.  That was the first, but not the last time someone had to slice chunks out of one of my wounds to get the skin flaps to pull together (The last time was five years ago, and I had my dad do it when I split my finger wide open while working in the oil field.   I had no insurance and didn't want to claim workmen's compensation).

During the winter that I turned 8-years-old my brother Jason goaded me into attempting to innertube down a small cliff.  He gave me a shove to get me going and off I went.  As my brother Robert could testify, me and the innertube parted ways in mid-air.   I hit the flat ground below and didn't move for roughly half an hour.  Jason and Robert had a nice debate at the top about whether or not I was really hurt.  Jason, being the older brother, won the debate, although he was the one who didn't actually see what happened.  My back was out of place and it hurt too bad to talk so I didn't chime in.  Jason, firmly believing that I was faking injury (I did do that sometimes), convinced Robert to leave me there.  They went home.  I eventually crawled home with the sled tether in my teeth.  I did have my Dad put my back back in place, but my parents didn't find out about what happened until we were all adults.

I broke my first bone the following summer, still 8-years-old.  I was playing catch in a gravel parking lot when I slipped and broke my wrist.  That kicked off a lengthy series of broken bone injuries - I stopped counting when I hit 20 breaks, and there have been quite a few since then. 

Some (very) brief injury highlights: 
1.  At 15-years-old I compression-fractured vertebrae T4, cracked six ribs, and dislocated both my thumbs in a ski-crash (also involving a cliff).  I didn't tell my parents for two weeks.  (Those were really cool X-rays)
2.  At 16-years-old I tore the cartilage in my left knee doing some kickboxing sparring.  I couldn't physically straighten the limb because the cartilage had locked the joint.  A friend of mine had to yank it straight.  The sound my knee made was so sickening he screamed.  That knee is trashed to this day.  It was never treated.
3.  A few months after Sarah and I got married, I ran a marathon three days after I got two cracked ribs and dislocated a vertebrae in a 'berthing brawl' onboard the Hopper.  I had sciatica (nerve pain shooting down the back of my left leg) for the first 8 miles.  I was also stupid enough to wear shoes that I hadn't broken in yet.  I wound up with massive blood pools under each big toenail.  Two months later I was due to spend a month doing search and rescue swimmer training.  With all that time in the water I was worried my half-attached toenails would get infected underneath.  Thus, I grabbed my multi-tool and finished the job.  I ripped out my own toenails.  It honestly wasn't that bad until I got to the cuticles.

Okay, that's enough of that.  The point is, I'm pretty comfortable with pain.  I don't care if Evan is ever capable of ripping out his own toenails.  I don't care if he's the toughest kid in school, or even in the top ten.  But I don't want him to be a wimp.  Wimps get picked on.  Wimps get relegated to the bottom of the social food chain.  I don't want Evan to activate other kids' predatory instincts because they know he falls apart when he gets a boo-boo. 

But learning to 'man up' means learning to deal with pain.  Learning the theory just doesn't cut it.  I hate seeing any of my children in pain though.  I am thus conflicted, dare I say even, cognitively dissonant.

I honestly don't know if I'm out-of-line worrying about such things.  In the 21st century should fathers be beyond caring whether their sons are manly enough?  Thoughts anyone?

Getting a steel rod pulled out from the end of my knuckle (it was driven straight through the joint) two months after reconstructive surgery on that hand.  That rod came out easy.  The other one you can see required the doc to get up on the table so he could get his legs into the effort.  A nurse held my hand down.  It took him about a half-hour of twisting and pulling to get it out.  He had to take periodic breaks from the exertion.  Needless to say, it didn't feel very nice for me either, and there was zero anesthetic involved.  Sarah was watching and said I was pretty pale after that. 

P.S.  Evan did eventually go back into the game.  I was proud.  Was I also a neandertal?