It doesn’t tickle my fancy
I’m extremely ticklish. The minute anyone tickles me, I would go into convulsions.
IT’S tough bringing up children these days. Everyone has an opinion about what you should and shouldn’t do. Some people think you’re not supposed to say or do anything that could hurt a child physically, mentally or emotionally, even mildly.
When I was growing up, my parents had a “spare the rod; spoil the child” sort of mentality, which I don’t think did me too much harm.
Sure, I have one ear bigger than the other ( my mother used to twist it when I was being obnoxious in public); I’m still terrified of the bogeyman who lives under my bed; and I have yet to deal with my feelings of inadequacy arising from the dress my mother once made for me out of curtain material, the same curtain material that just about every pupil in my second grade class saw hanging from their living room window every day. I suspect the fabric must have been on offer in the local village at some time.
Some might say I was abused as a child, but I feel my experiences were fairly typical of someone growing up during the 1960s and 70s in rural Scotland. Way back then, most parents didn’t know any better. Besides, I think you’ll find most families are dysfunctional; it’s just a matter of degree.
I still remember the only day I ever wore that homemade dress to school. As soon as I stepped onto the school bus, someone yelled out, “What are you doing wearing your mother’s curtains?” “It’s not curtains,” I responded. “Is so,” said another voice. I’d barely stepped off the bus and into the school playground when a group of children had surrounded me, gawking at my amazing curtain dress. The way they were looking at me, you’d think I was the Elephant Man or some other circus oddity.
That afternoon, I arrived home in tears, scarred for life by my curtain dress. When I asked my mother why she’d done that to me, she told me I should be glad to have a dress. It seems there were some children living in Africa who would have rejoiced at having their body encased in embossed curtain fabric.
I responded by saying I would gladly mail
the dress to Africa, whereupon I was sent to my room. I removed the offending dress and flung it under my bed. If the bogeyman wanted it, he could damn well have it.
Nonetheless, there is one childhood activity that has had a huge affect on me, even to this day. Something more insidious than a throbbing ear, or a dented ego, or the creature that waits under my bed to grab me by the ankles should I dare get up in the middle of the night. It’s the tickling torture. I’m extremely ticklish, to the extent that it’s almost impossible for me to endure a massage, or a pedicure, or certain types of physiotherapy. I suspect my extreme sensitivity was the main reason my parents never tickled me.
You could have twisted my ears until they resembled little red tortellini, and I would have borne it stoically. But the minute anyone began tickling me, I would go into convulsions. I would drop onto the floor, where I would kick, writhe, scream, and gasp for
air. I was usually convinced that I was going to die. I also laughed, but there was no enjoyment. Such laughter was both painful and entirely involuntary.
I had an uncle who discovered early on that I was ticklish. The more I asked him to stop, the more he wanted to do it.
Every time I visited his house with my mother, I would hide behind her skirt, hoping he wouldn’t see me. But he was like a heat- seeking missile.
He would say something like, “I think there is someone here who likes to be tickled,” in a sort of pantomime voice. Then he would tiptoe towards me in an exaggerated way.
Immediately, my heart would begin to race. I would look around, trying to find an escape route. But he was a tall man with long arms that could grab me in a second.
I would collapse onto the floor in terror, while he tickled me mercilessly. If there had been an open door leading onto a busy motor- way, I would have chosen to run through it if it meant I could escape from him, such was my dread. Similarly, if a fork or some other sharp object had been thrust into my hand at that moment, I probably wouldn’t have hesitated to plunge it into one of his eyes.
I both despised and feared my uncle. I hated the feeling of being held down and overpowered. I hated that he ignored my screams to stop. I hated that no one intervened on my behalf.
Some children love to be tickled, even to the extent that they sometimes ask adults to play the tickling game with them. However, the moment a child tells a tickler to stop and the request is ignored, it constitutes child abuse.
Such perpetrators deserve to be fed to the bogeyman.
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