Last night, during the commencing of the bedtime rituals for my youngest son, we shared the nightly scratching of the backs. This means my little guy said, “Dad, can you lie down with me for a little bit?”
And I said, “You know what would keep me here?” to which he giggles and starts scratching my back.
This ritual happens almost every night. He will scratch my back for awhile, and I end having to scratch his back for at least twice as long as he scratched mine. We do this like two or three times every week because… well… I love having my back scratched and so does he 🙂
Last night, after he finished scratching the same five square-inches of my back for about 30 seconds, I began scratching his back all over, as I always do. As always, as I moved to the sides of his back, he wiggles around and giggles, “Quit ticklin.” Of course, I don’t stop. I continually tease him with the occasional tickle for a good four or five minutes. He loves it. Tonight, however, the tickles raised a question.
“How come you aren’t ticklish?”
I don’t know quite how to answer this. The youngest son, although he usually concentrates on a specific, limited portion of skin on my back for his scratching, has moved around the sides and underarm areas in an attempt to get a tickle-response out of his old man. I can think of no time that he has actually evoked the tickle-response. In fact, I can’t remember actually being ticklish since I was in high school.
“I guess I outgrew it,” I said to the boy.
He looks at me with those soft brown eyes that are always just wet enough to keep you guessing as to whether he is about to burst in to tears or burst into laughter, and he says, “That’s too bad.”
That’s too bad.
And it kind of hits me; that really is too bad. Since when did I not want to be ticklish? What part of growing up dictates that I can no longer be forced into uncontrollable bouts of laughter by someone brushing their fingers across my skin? What part of the aging process forces the skin to be not so easily moved to silliness by another person’s touch?
A part of my youth is gone… has been gone for an extremely long period of time… and I will never get that back. Neither of my sons nor my wife will be able to ever sink their fingers gently into my ribs to evoke a giggling response. I think I miss that.
Being tickled too much can be, at the least, annoying, and ,at the most, downright painful. Being tickled ‘just right’ is a fun way to connect with another human being. Even when someone is completely down in the dumps, applying slight pressure to the side of the rib area and wiggling the fingers to and fro usually can, at the very least, generate a smile 🙂 The fact that I will never experience this again kind of hit me last night.
That’s too bad.