YouNeverKnow175
TMF Master
- Joined
- Sep 30, 2002
- Messages
- 810
- Points
- 18
“Thank you again for taking the time to speak with me, Mrs. Smith,” the voice said over the phone.
“Not a problem,” Deb replied.
“As I mentioned, we’re doing a research study on mother/daughter adult bonds and one of the ways we have identified that daughters and mothers bond is through daughters confiding in their mothers, particularly sharing with them situations in which they are vulnerable. So this particular segment of the study has to do with tickling. We’ve found that when mother/daughter bonds are especially strong, the daughter tends to confide in the mother about times when she experienced being tickled. She was vulnerable in those situations, and she trusts the mother as someone she can share the experience with.”
“Right,” said Deb. “Well, sounds fine. Are you interviewing the daughters too?”
“No, we’re not. We’ve found that the mothers’ account tends to be more reliable. The daughter in this situation - when talking to a stranger, the researched, tends to downplay the experience of being tickled, whereas with the mother she tends to open up fully.”
“Oh, that makes sense. Okay…and…fifty bucks you said?”
“Fifty dollars, yes. And it should only take about twenty minutes of your time.”
“Okay then,” said Deb. “Let’s begin.”
“Great. So your daughter is Ashley?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s how old?”
“She’s twenty-six now.”
“Okay. And is Ashley ticklish?”
“Oh yes,” Deb said with a reminiscent chuckle. “She’s very ticklish.”
“Great. Now we’re going to specifically focus on experiences she has shared with you in adulthood, that is, age eighteen or older. Have you and Ashley talked about the fact that she’s ticklish in the last eight years?”
“Well, sure we have!”
“The subject has come up a lot?”
“Well, she always seems to be getting herself into ticklish situations!” Deb chuckled again.
“And does she frequently tell you about these situations?”
“Well I’m often there to witness them!”
“Could you share one example?”
“Oh, sure - well, her senior year of high school - I mean, she was eighteen, so that counts, right?” “It sure does.”
“She had arch pain in her foot. I took her to the doctor and the doctor did all these tests. He was touching her feet and even had to draw lines on them with a pen. That sent her through the roof!”
“Okay, and you were witnessing this?”
“Oh yes, I even joked with the doctor about how ticklish she is. She was gripping the exam table for dear life. I can still see the pained expression on her face.”
“Okay, this is a good example. What we’re interested in is if Ashley confided in you afterward about her experience - whether she just acted like it never happened, or whether she said anything about it afterward.”
“Oh yes, as we were driving home she said, ‘I can’t believe how much that tickled!’ I told her, ‘Well, sweetie, what did you expect? You’re very ticklish!’ She said, ‘Well he was drawing on my foot! That would drive anyone crazy!’ She was probably right about that one.”
“Great, I’m just making a few notes here. And was that the extent of the conversation?”
“That was about it. I think I teased her a bit more about it, how much she was wiggling and wincing.”
“As much detail as you can provide would be very helpful, Ma’am.”
“Oh, sure. Right. Well she didn’t like that I was teasing her, but it was all in good fun. She said, ‘Well Mom, I didn’t want to laugh!’ I asked her why she cared if she laughed - after all, it tickled! She said she felt embarrassed. I said, ‘Well Ash, I’m sure you’re not the first ticklish person that doctor has seen.’ She said, ‘Well I didn’t want to be remembered as the MOST ticklish person he’s ever seen!’ I said, ‘Well you probably will be anyway!!!’” She cackled out loud. “That was about it.”
“Okay, thank you very much. Now was there ever an experience where you didn’t witness it, but she confided in you anyway?”
“About being tickled?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Hmm….let me think. Oh, yes. The field hockey bus. One day that same year, she came home after the field hockey game. I asked her how it was, and she said the game was great, but the bus ride was awful! I said, ‘Why was that, honey?’ And she said ‘The girls ganged up on me and tickled me!’”
“Great, so she confided in you again. Did she say anything about how she felt?”
“She said she got very nervous as soon as they started poking her, because they were all so amused by her reactions. She knew they were all getting a kick out of it, saying, ‘Oh Ashley, you’re so ticklish! I can’t believe how ticklish you are!’”
“And what happened then?”
“They started to do more than poke, she told me. They found all her worst spots and tickled her all over - three or four of them, I think.”
“And where are her worst spots?”
“Oh boy, well, she’s so ticklish everywhere. But I’d have to say her belly, her underarms, her sides, her feet - those are probably the worst. I think that’s where she said they tickled her.”
“So they took her shoes off?”
“If I recall, she had already taken her shoes off, but they took her socks off.”
“Since feet aren’t usually exposed, people often feel particularly vulnerable when they’re tickled there. So the fact that she confided in you about that shows a lot of trust.”
Deb smiled smugly. “She trusts her mama, of course she trusts her mama!”
“Did she tell you how long this went on for?”
“At least ten minutes. She said she was laughing hysterically. But she had no chance of getting away.”
“And the girls - did they tease her about being so ticklish the whole time?” “Oh yes, they seemed to find it very amusing that the littlest touches made her squirm, and that then when they actually tickled her, she just freaked out so much.”
“Great, this is excellent. Thank you.”
Kyle couldn’t believe how well this was working. In his wildest dreams, it couldn’t have been this easy. “So,” he continued. “Often it’s during accidental tickling scenarios, like the doctor drawing on Ashley’s foot, where people feel the most embarrassed by the experience - because it’s not even intended to tickle. So confiding in the mother about these kinds of experiences is especially interesting to us. Has Ashley shared with you any more of these type of experiences? Perhaps pedicures, massages…?”
“Oh, yes! It’s true! You’re good. Let’s see. Well, hmm - there are a lot! She would always have a very hard time with the doctor pressing on her stomach during an examination. She would close her eyes and bite her lip and usually break down giggling. The doctor would always apologize for putting her through such agony and she’d be giggling and saying, ‘It’s ookkaayyyy!!!’ through her laughter. I was there for a few of those, but we didn’t really talk about it much after.”
As incredible as this was, hearing these tales recounted, Kyle had actually so far heard all of them before. Both of the doctor scenarios he’d heard from Ashley herself while they were dating, and the bus story a mutual friend had actually told him a few years ago. Hearing that bus story from her was what made him realize just how much he loved hearing tickling stories retold from a third-party observer. He was hoping so much to hear about something he hadn’t known about already. “Okay, great. And massages? Pedicures? You said there were so many?”
“Ashley’s first experience with a professional massage was sometime in college. She told me afterward that she did fine until the man oiled up her feet and started rubbing them. That just about drove her up the wall. She said - oh, gosh, this is so cute, my baby! - that her ‘toes would get lost between his fingers as he was massaging’ and that her toes felt very ticklish during that part! And yes, to use your words, she ‘confided’ in me about this.”
Kyle pictured Ashley’s gorgeous, long toes. She was such a small girl - only 5’3” - but had pretty big feet for her size - size 8 1/2 - and very long toes, which he loved.
Without prompting, Deb continued. “Pedicures, yes, oh gosh. The first time she got one - I don’t think she knew what to expect. It was a treat just after graduating college, and I took her. Poor thing - I should have known better.”
She had Kyle’s full attention. “What happened, Ma’am?”
“Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever had a pedicure, but there is a part where they scrub the bottom of your foot. Poor Ash - her face - it was like she couldn’t believe it. She had a death grip on the chair, and she looked over at me as if to say, ‘Mom, help!’ I just shrugged and smiled.”
“Okay, wow, excellent - yes - please, continue.”
“The woman was so funny,” Deb laughed. “She asked Ash if this was her first time and she told her it was. Then she asked, ‘Are your feet really ticklish?’ and Ash turned bright red and cried out, ‘YES!’ But I think that was kind of freeing for her because it was out in the open - before that point she was trying to cover it up. Then she just started laughing. So sweet, her little high-pitched giggles and sighs. She buried her face in her hands at one point!”
“Now, you two must have talked about this afterward?”
“Oh yes! She said, ‘Mom, I had no idea it was going to tickle so much!’ I felt guilty for getting her into that mess, so I just told her how pretty her pink toesies looked. She said she couldn’t believe people actually get pedicures regularly. She also said she felt so silly laughing in front of all the other women in the salon! But I told her not to worry about it, that it happens all the time.”
“Sounds like such lovely support from her mother,” Kyle said, trying to get the words out without stammering. It wasn’t that he was still in love with Ashley - he had long moved on. But she was such a pretty girl - her shoulder-length brown hair, her button nose, her blue eyes - and he just loved revisiting all her amazing old tickle stories in his mind so much, and then the idea came to him. It took some serious guts to pull it off, but he had. But he wasn’t quite ready to be done.
“Now, have there been any other times you witnessed Ashley being tickled as an adult?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, of course. I mean - her uncle Richie - he’s quite the tickler.”
Like the pedicure, this was also new information to Kyle. “So…family gatherings?”
“Yes, why actually, just a few weeks ago we had a family barbecue, and, boy, did he get her good.”
“Could you describe what happened?”
“Yes, of course, of course. Ashley was lying on a lounge chair, tanning. Rich came up and made some crack about her getting too much sun. Then the next thing I know, Ash is screaming bloody murder and Rich is tickling her practically off the chair.”
“Oh, wow. In front of the whole family?”
“Oh yes, but they’re used to it by now.”
“And how long did it go on?”
“Oh gosh, several minutes. She was begging him, poor girl. I almost intervened, but I think she’s used to it by now, too. I think she was going especially wild this time because he managed to get under her armpits. Usually she clenches up her body really tight and he can only get her ribs and her belly.”
“So did the two of you talk about this later?”
“Not really, it’s kind of par for the course, nothing too remarkable.”
“Have you ever talked about it?”
“Oh, I’m sure we have. I think she thought it would stop after she got a bit older, but it hasn’t. So a few years ago she said, ‘How old do I have to be for Uncle Richie to finally stop tickling me?? Forty? Fifty??’ I told her, ‘I don’t think he ever will!’”
“Interesting, so it sounds like this, more than the others, is a scenario where she feels quite vulnerable - almost like she really doesn’t like it?”
“Well the poor girl, she’s so ticklish! And he’s so much bigger! So she has no way to stop him. But she takes it in stride. She laughs a lot, you know, she’s a good girl.”
“Was that the extent of your conversation?”
“Actually,” she laughed. “Then she said, ‘Do you think I’ll get any less ticklish as I get older, then??’ I chuckled and said, ‘Maybe you’ll get lucky, sweetie.’”
“But she hasn’t yet?”
“Oh, most certainly not. She’s still as ticklish as she was when she was a squirmy little girl. Maybe even more!!” She laughed again.
“Well, Mrs. Smith, thank you so much for your time. This is immensely helpful for our research. And we’ll send your payment through PayPal right away.”
“Oh, my pleasure. I’m glad it helped. It’s fun to talk about, actually! My sweet girl - so ticklish!” she laughed and hung up the phone.
Kyle took a deep breath. He couldn’t believe it. And he was already plotting his next call.
“Not a problem,” Deb replied.
“As I mentioned, we’re doing a research study on mother/daughter adult bonds and one of the ways we have identified that daughters and mothers bond is through daughters confiding in their mothers, particularly sharing with them situations in which they are vulnerable. So this particular segment of the study has to do with tickling. We’ve found that when mother/daughter bonds are especially strong, the daughter tends to confide in the mother about times when she experienced being tickled. She was vulnerable in those situations, and she trusts the mother as someone she can share the experience with.”
“Right,” said Deb. “Well, sounds fine. Are you interviewing the daughters too?”
“No, we’re not. We’ve found that the mothers’ account tends to be more reliable. The daughter in this situation - when talking to a stranger, the researched, tends to downplay the experience of being tickled, whereas with the mother she tends to open up fully.”
“Oh, that makes sense. Okay…and…fifty bucks you said?”
“Fifty dollars, yes. And it should only take about twenty minutes of your time.”
“Okay then,” said Deb. “Let’s begin.”
“Great. So your daughter is Ashley?”
“Yes.”
“And she’s how old?”
“She’s twenty-six now.”
“Okay. And is Ashley ticklish?”
“Oh yes,” Deb said with a reminiscent chuckle. “She’s very ticklish.”
“Great. Now we’re going to specifically focus on experiences she has shared with you in adulthood, that is, age eighteen or older. Have you and Ashley talked about the fact that she’s ticklish in the last eight years?”
“Well, sure we have!”
“The subject has come up a lot?”
“Well, she always seems to be getting herself into ticklish situations!” Deb chuckled again.
“And does she frequently tell you about these situations?”
“Well I’m often there to witness them!”
“Could you share one example?”
“Oh, sure - well, her senior year of high school - I mean, she was eighteen, so that counts, right?” “It sure does.”
“She had arch pain in her foot. I took her to the doctor and the doctor did all these tests. He was touching her feet and even had to draw lines on them with a pen. That sent her through the roof!”
“Okay, and you were witnessing this?”
“Oh yes, I even joked with the doctor about how ticklish she is. She was gripping the exam table for dear life. I can still see the pained expression on her face.”
“Okay, this is a good example. What we’re interested in is if Ashley confided in you afterward about her experience - whether she just acted like it never happened, or whether she said anything about it afterward.”
“Oh yes, as we were driving home she said, ‘I can’t believe how much that tickled!’ I told her, ‘Well, sweetie, what did you expect? You’re very ticklish!’ She said, ‘Well he was drawing on my foot! That would drive anyone crazy!’ She was probably right about that one.”
“Great, I’m just making a few notes here. And was that the extent of the conversation?”
“That was about it. I think I teased her a bit more about it, how much she was wiggling and wincing.”
“As much detail as you can provide would be very helpful, Ma’am.”
“Oh, sure. Right. Well she didn’t like that I was teasing her, but it was all in good fun. She said, ‘Well Mom, I didn’t want to laugh!’ I asked her why she cared if she laughed - after all, it tickled! She said she felt embarrassed. I said, ‘Well Ash, I’m sure you’re not the first ticklish person that doctor has seen.’ She said, ‘Well I didn’t want to be remembered as the MOST ticklish person he’s ever seen!’ I said, ‘Well you probably will be anyway!!!’” She cackled out loud. “That was about it.”
“Okay, thank you very much. Now was there ever an experience where you didn’t witness it, but she confided in you anyway?”
“About being tickled?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Hmm….let me think. Oh, yes. The field hockey bus. One day that same year, she came home after the field hockey game. I asked her how it was, and she said the game was great, but the bus ride was awful! I said, ‘Why was that, honey?’ And she said ‘The girls ganged up on me and tickled me!’”
“Great, so she confided in you again. Did she say anything about how she felt?”
“She said she got very nervous as soon as they started poking her, because they were all so amused by her reactions. She knew they were all getting a kick out of it, saying, ‘Oh Ashley, you’re so ticklish! I can’t believe how ticklish you are!’”
“And what happened then?”
“They started to do more than poke, she told me. They found all her worst spots and tickled her all over - three or four of them, I think.”
“And where are her worst spots?”
“Oh boy, well, she’s so ticklish everywhere. But I’d have to say her belly, her underarms, her sides, her feet - those are probably the worst. I think that’s where she said they tickled her.”
“So they took her shoes off?”
“If I recall, she had already taken her shoes off, but they took her socks off.”
“Since feet aren’t usually exposed, people often feel particularly vulnerable when they’re tickled there. So the fact that she confided in you about that shows a lot of trust.”
Deb smiled smugly. “She trusts her mama, of course she trusts her mama!”
“Did she tell you how long this went on for?”
“At least ten minutes. She said she was laughing hysterically. But she had no chance of getting away.”
“And the girls - did they tease her about being so ticklish the whole time?” “Oh yes, they seemed to find it very amusing that the littlest touches made her squirm, and that then when they actually tickled her, she just freaked out so much.”
“Great, this is excellent. Thank you.”
Kyle couldn’t believe how well this was working. In his wildest dreams, it couldn’t have been this easy. “So,” he continued. “Often it’s during accidental tickling scenarios, like the doctor drawing on Ashley’s foot, where people feel the most embarrassed by the experience - because it’s not even intended to tickle. So confiding in the mother about these kinds of experiences is especially interesting to us. Has Ashley shared with you any more of these type of experiences? Perhaps pedicures, massages…?”
“Oh, yes! It’s true! You’re good. Let’s see. Well, hmm - there are a lot! She would always have a very hard time with the doctor pressing on her stomach during an examination. She would close her eyes and bite her lip and usually break down giggling. The doctor would always apologize for putting her through such agony and she’d be giggling and saying, ‘It’s ookkaayyyy!!!’ through her laughter. I was there for a few of those, but we didn’t really talk about it much after.”
As incredible as this was, hearing these tales recounted, Kyle had actually so far heard all of them before. Both of the doctor scenarios he’d heard from Ashley herself while they were dating, and the bus story a mutual friend had actually told him a few years ago. Hearing that bus story from her was what made him realize just how much he loved hearing tickling stories retold from a third-party observer. He was hoping so much to hear about something he hadn’t known about already. “Okay, great. And massages? Pedicures? You said there were so many?”
“Ashley’s first experience with a professional massage was sometime in college. She told me afterward that she did fine until the man oiled up her feet and started rubbing them. That just about drove her up the wall. She said - oh, gosh, this is so cute, my baby! - that her ‘toes would get lost between his fingers as he was massaging’ and that her toes felt very ticklish during that part! And yes, to use your words, she ‘confided’ in me about this.”
Kyle pictured Ashley’s gorgeous, long toes. She was such a small girl - only 5’3” - but had pretty big feet for her size - size 8 1/2 - and very long toes, which he loved.
Without prompting, Deb continued. “Pedicures, yes, oh gosh. The first time she got one - I don’t think she knew what to expect. It was a treat just after graduating college, and I took her. Poor thing - I should have known better.”
She had Kyle’s full attention. “What happened, Ma’am?”
“Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever had a pedicure, but there is a part where they scrub the bottom of your foot. Poor Ash - her face - it was like she couldn’t believe it. She had a death grip on the chair, and she looked over at me as if to say, ‘Mom, help!’ I just shrugged and smiled.”
“Okay, wow, excellent - yes - please, continue.”
“The woman was so funny,” Deb laughed. “She asked Ash if this was her first time and she told her it was. Then she asked, ‘Are your feet really ticklish?’ and Ash turned bright red and cried out, ‘YES!’ But I think that was kind of freeing for her because it was out in the open - before that point she was trying to cover it up. Then she just started laughing. So sweet, her little high-pitched giggles and sighs. She buried her face in her hands at one point!”
“Now, you two must have talked about this afterward?”
“Oh yes! She said, ‘Mom, I had no idea it was going to tickle so much!’ I felt guilty for getting her into that mess, so I just told her how pretty her pink toesies looked. She said she couldn’t believe people actually get pedicures regularly. She also said she felt so silly laughing in front of all the other women in the salon! But I told her not to worry about it, that it happens all the time.”
“Sounds like such lovely support from her mother,” Kyle said, trying to get the words out without stammering. It wasn’t that he was still in love with Ashley - he had long moved on. But she was such a pretty girl - her shoulder-length brown hair, her button nose, her blue eyes - and he just loved revisiting all her amazing old tickle stories in his mind so much, and then the idea came to him. It took some serious guts to pull it off, but he had. But he wasn’t quite ready to be done.
“Now, have there been any other times you witnessed Ashley being tickled as an adult?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, of course. I mean - her uncle Richie - he’s quite the tickler.”
Like the pedicure, this was also new information to Kyle. “So…family gatherings?”
“Yes, why actually, just a few weeks ago we had a family barbecue, and, boy, did he get her good.”
“Could you describe what happened?”
“Yes, of course, of course. Ashley was lying on a lounge chair, tanning. Rich came up and made some crack about her getting too much sun. Then the next thing I know, Ash is screaming bloody murder and Rich is tickling her practically off the chair.”
“Oh, wow. In front of the whole family?”
“Oh yes, but they’re used to it by now.”
“And how long did it go on?”
“Oh gosh, several minutes. She was begging him, poor girl. I almost intervened, but I think she’s used to it by now, too. I think she was going especially wild this time because he managed to get under her armpits. Usually she clenches up her body really tight and he can only get her ribs and her belly.”
“So did the two of you talk about this later?”
“Not really, it’s kind of par for the course, nothing too remarkable.”
“Have you ever talked about it?”
“Oh, I’m sure we have. I think she thought it would stop after she got a bit older, but it hasn’t. So a few years ago she said, ‘How old do I have to be for Uncle Richie to finally stop tickling me?? Forty? Fifty??’ I told her, ‘I don’t think he ever will!’”
“Interesting, so it sounds like this, more than the others, is a scenario where she feels quite vulnerable - almost like she really doesn’t like it?”
“Well the poor girl, she’s so ticklish! And he’s so much bigger! So she has no way to stop him. But she takes it in stride. She laughs a lot, you know, she’s a good girl.”
“Was that the extent of your conversation?”
“Actually,” she laughed. “Then she said, ‘Do you think I’ll get any less ticklish as I get older, then??’ I chuckled and said, ‘Maybe you’ll get lucky, sweetie.’”
“But she hasn’t yet?”
“Oh, most certainly not. She’s still as ticklish as she was when she was a squirmy little girl. Maybe even more!!” She laughed again.
“Well, Mrs. Smith, thank you so much for your time. This is immensely helpful for our research. And we’ll send your payment through PayPal right away.”
“Oh, my pleasure. I’m glad it helped. It’s fun to talk about, actually! My sweet girl - so ticklish!” she laughed and hung up the phone.
Kyle took a deep breath. He couldn’t believe it. And he was already plotting his next call.
