07.10.2002 - 1:17 p.m.

When I was little, my parents used to get us to eat vegetables by promising that the icky green things on our plates could give us superpowers. After dinner, if we�d eaten enough, Mom would draw Super-Sarah and Super-Jeremy logos to pin to our shirts, and then we�d run into the front room to attack Dad. He would let us win for a little while, but it always ended with one of us pinned under his arm, one under his leg, and tickling. Lots of tickling.

�But we ate our vegetables,� we�d protest.

�I�m older. I�ve eaten more,� he�d explain. That's when Mom would usually come to our rescue, saying that we�d fought valiantly and that dessert was served.

I think I was about four when I decided it was undignified to be ticklish. So I stopped. It�s not that hard; you just have to think of your skin as something you�re watching and not something you can feel.

I stopped too well, I think. It didn�t work anymore, ever, not even along my last few ribs, where I�m the worst. I had to leave the after-dinner roughhousing to my brother, thinking I was Growing Up.

I don�t know why I ever did that to myself.

I decided to be ticklish again around thirteen or fourteen. It makes for good flirting. But I still had to spend a year or two where I was only pretending, making the required noises and twitches, but not feeling anything. It took a while to remind myself that my skin was a part of me.

I feel it now. I am definitely ticklish, the real kind of ticklish. I am not like some people, who are always ticklish no matter what the intent of the person touching their feet or their sides, and I can still turn it off, but it's getting harder and harder to do. It�s one of those things you can either shut in or let out, but not both.

It�s like communication. Impulse. Enthusiasm. Friendship.

Love. It�s like love.

-stonebridge

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