I am a little, err, somewhat, OK, ridiculously ticklish. When I was little my mother, my mother, would torture me by…pretending to tickle me. I would be laughing helplessly on the floor and her hands never got closer than 4″ to my body. But I hated being ticklish, perhaps because my mother, my own mother for pity’s sake, thought this was hysterical.
You expect that sort of treatment from big brothers, right? And I had two of those so…I certainly got some of their brand of torture too. Their idea of torture, though, was scarily close to actual torture and involved filament lines strung between trees and 4 foot deep pits dug in the woods and covered with branches to conceal them ((To their credit, they never put any sharp objects at the bottom of the pit.)) from pesky little sisters who might follow them ((Everywhere)) into the woods. We certainly couldn’t have that happen because pesky little sisters might tattle on them when they played war games with actual guns…OK, fine, they were “only” bb guns. Dude, I get on some wicked tangents sometimes.
Anyway, to me tickling = torture. Monkey, however, loves to be tickled. He craves tickling. It’s actually something we can do to him to make him comfortable in an otherwise uncomfortable situation, like an exam room. He laughs these great big belly laughs that make me want to eat him right up. Honestly, those curls plus that laugh = code red on the Monkey-nomming scale. Though, to be honest, the Monkey-nomming scale is generally at a pretty high level of yellow. The poor kid is used to it and even makes the snarfing sounds I make on his neck when the nomming commences to coax me into doing it sometimes. I can’t even make it a whole paragraph without a tangent.
As I was trying to say, Monkey also loves to make people laugh. Recently he has made the connection that tickling Money = helpless laughter. Do you see where this is going ((Seriously, if you do, you deserve a cookie because I was not sure until just now.))?
This evening, while I was trying to get the little beast in his pajamas, he took every single opportunity he could find to stick his hands under my arm to tickle me! You know what, there are a lot of opportunities to tickle someone when they’re focused on squishing a little Monkey into his pajamas!
To sum up…
Money: tickle = torture
Monkey: tickle = helpless laughter
I’m doomed. DOOMED!
I felt like I could have read this.. I can’t stand to be tickled I just freak out when someone pretends to tickle me.. but if you tickle my son or even pretend to laugh he bust out into this up roar of laughter that is completely contagious!