I remember when I was a little boy, my grandmother suddenly declared, in casual conversation one day, that she couldn't stand seeing people tickle other people. She didn't go into detail, but I remember another time when she let out to me and my sister that, when she and our grandfather were young and newly married (this would have been way back in the 1920s!) he sometimes used to tickle her feet in bed, without her permission, and that she was terribly ticklish and had not liked it one bit.
Their marriage wasn't a happy one, and they separated after raising my mother and her brother. They are both long gone now, God bless them.
But this has always made me think of my grandfather in a new light. As I grow older I see his face looking at me out of the mirror sometimes - we take after each other physically. And maybe in other ways too, by the sound of it. I think he was a crafty old goat. He went to sea from the London docks when he was 16, in the middle of the First World War, and for the next few years into the early 1920s he continued to sail the world, including rounding the Horn in a windjammer, one of the last four-masted sailing vessels. He called in at ports in most parts of the world, and I sometimes wonder what he got up to when he came ashore after a long trip and went in search of refreshment.
I feel that my tickling inclinations might to some extent have been inherited from this mischievous soul.
Does anyone else have reason to think that tickling might have gone on in previous generations of their own families? Not easy to verify, but stories and hints are passed down sometimes. I like to think of the long history of tickling through the generations and how we take our place in the noble line of inheritance!
Their marriage wasn't a happy one, and they separated after raising my mother and her brother. They are both long gone now, God bless them.
But this has always made me think of my grandfather in a new light. As I grow older I see his face looking at me out of the mirror sometimes - we take after each other physically. And maybe in other ways too, by the sound of it. I think he was a crafty old goat. He went to sea from the London docks when he was 16, in the middle of the First World War, and for the next few years into the early 1920s he continued to sail the world, including rounding the Horn in a windjammer, one of the last four-masted sailing vessels. He called in at ports in most parts of the world, and I sometimes wonder what he got up to when he came ashore after a long trip and went in search of refreshment.
I feel that my tickling inclinations might to some extent have been inherited from this mischievous soul.
Does anyone else have reason to think that tickling might have gone on in previous generations of their own families? Not easy to verify, but stories and hints are passed down sometimes. I like to think of the long history of tickling through the generations and how we take our place in the noble line of inheritance!