Intuiting someone's ticklishness

[SteveTheTrout]

Hi all - I've read posts that expound on the various predictors (or lack thereof) of ticklishness - race, ethnicity, hair color, personality, etc., so I'm not trying to re-hash that debate. Being a science geek, I'd feel comfortable designing a study to test these hypotheses, but I doubt I would be so lucky as to get funded to do so.

Rather, I'm interested in how some correct some of the more experienced ticklers here have found their "gut feeling" regarding a potential 'lee's ticklishness, and what they base their gut instinct on. Maybe even more enlightening is when their intuition is wrong.

Have you ever just KNOWN that somebody would be incredibly ticklish, but turns out they weren't at all, or maybe you would have bet that somebody wasn't ticklish in the least, and it turns out that they were off-the-charts ticklish?

Me - I once knew a girl in college - red-head, fair-skinned, bubbly personality, loved to laugh, great laugh, etc. Would have sworn that she would be off-the-charts ticklish, but unfortunately it was like tickling a rock.

Another girl in college - this one I dated (unfortunately for far too long!) - very reserved, uptight, proper, conservative, and always carried a sour look on her face. I was very surprised at how ticklish she was (and of course she hated it, and would always deny that she was - she was a control freak too, which probably explains a lot of it!)

I'd be interested to hear your experiences.

 

[GEORGIATKLER]

As long as you use your powers for good and not evil......😉 Our "intuition" may be linked to our idea/ideas of the perfect 'lee or even our level of tickling deprivation. I am sure the tickle vid producers would love to have available such a "Soniclarvoyant" to screen potential models. Given the variance in a person's ticklishness by tickle spots and sensitivity with friends versus a "renfaire" capture scenario, it might be hard to tune in your "leedar". This also make me wonder how accurate one's assessment of your own ticklishness would be. Of course those of us on TMF obviously know our own limits better than the vanilla world knows theirs.

 

[BMoreTklr]

I like that term GATkler...."lee-dar" lol. But to address the question, over the years I've learned there's several factors to influence a person's ticklishness. Granted, there are some folks who are just ridiculously ticklish by nature, but plenty others that are moderately ticklish, but can climb the charts to increased ticklish heights based on their comfort with the ler and the social interactions. At this point, I try not to make guesses anymore to a person's ticklishness (except at NEST 🙂 ) as I'd prefer to be hands-on in testing that and don't like to get my hopes up only to be let down by a less than my anticipated responses.