by: ??? *
Working at the Institute did have its advantages. That was hard for me to appreciate at the time, though. The pay was lousy, job security was non-existent; being as it was entirely grant-dependant, and the people Iworked with were, quite frankly, weird. But the Kinsey Institute of Behavioral Sciences, located smack dab in the heart of the UC Berkeley campus, was a dream come true for me in one respect.
You see, I'm into tickling. A strange subject to devote oneself to you might think. Yet I received nearly 75 thousand dollars a year to conduct my research. Most of it came from the National Science Foundation, but a goodly portion was funded by the Department of Defense - The Pentagon, a fact which had sorely puzzled me at the time. From this amount came lab equipment, computer time, my salary (a painfully small percentage), subscriptions to relevant scholarly journals and such, but a large part went to pay the test subjects I used. Let me tell you right now,they earned every penny!
Tickling and ticklishness has fascinated me all my life (just ask my poor kid sister). I mean, why should a person be ticklish at all? What purpose does it serve in our physiological make-up, and in the grand evolutionary scheme of things? Why does tic kling elicit laughter, even when exceedingly unpleasant? Why not screaming or crying (though theselast two certainly can accompany prolonged tickling)? These are questions I often asked myself, even as a child.
My kid sister was about the most ticklish person on the face of the Earth. I was merciless to her. Some friends and I would hide and wait for her to come home from school, this was almost a daily ritual. She came to expect it. She'd practically run all the way home, avoiding every dark corner or tree, till she got home where she'd finally relax. That's when we'd jump out from behind some bush or something and pin her down. I'd have the honor of unbuttoning her blouse and she would start to laugh even before I had a chance to actually tickle her. Her armpits were the best. My friends would pull her arms up and pin them tightly over her head while I, with a wicked, wicked grin on my face, let a squirming, wriggling finge r getcloser and closer to her smooth, white, sensitive armpit and she'd get hysterical. Even as she matured, she was still always just as ticklish.
At the Institute I got paid to tickle people. My budget, as I have said, included a substantial sum used to pay the numerous test subjects I used. The student body at Berkeley supplied by far the great majority of them. I ran an ad in the campus newspaper every day: Wanted: Test subjects for experiment in behavioral psychology. $75 per session. Apply Kinsey Institute. Now seventy five bucks is a fortune to a poor, starving student. I got several applicants each day and so I could afford to be choosy. Typically an applicant would call and I'd tell her to come to the Institute to fill out a questionnaire. If the application looked good (or the applicant!) I'd bring her into my lab to take a picture of her. She'd take her blouse off and I'dtake a picture of her with her arms raised, hands resting on top of her head.Then I attached the picture to the application and filed it. Only after I called someone back for a session was she paid the seventy five dollars.
I shall tell you about one test subject in particular. her name was Michelle and she seemed particularly hard-up for cash. She was 19, a sophomore in political science, and she was BEAUTIFUL! I struggled valiantly to retain my veneer of clinical detachment as she shyly pulled off her blouse in my office. I tried to devote all of my attention to her application while she sat on the edge of my examination table, waiting. I didn't want to seem too eager. She was obviously nervous as she sat there in her bra. She had auburn hair and lovely tan skin. Her application was even m ore promising.In answer to the question regarding degree of ticklishness, she marked the highest level: EXTREMELY ticklish. She numbered the degree of ticklishness of the various parts of her body like so: Armpits 10, Ribs 9,Feet 8, Knees 7, and on down.
I set the clipboard down. "Why don't you step over there so I can take a picture of you." I flashed my friendliest smile and motioned to one wall of the office where I had set up a camera and a couple of lights. She stood in front of the wall, arms crossed in front of her, while I turned on thelights and loaded film into the camera.
"Now raise you arms and put your hands on your head, that's right,good." Her level-10 ticklish armpits were a tickler's dream come true. They were creamy smooth and white, very much in contr ast with the beautiful tan glow of the rest of her torso. I had images of her laying out on somesunny beach, relaxed, yet with arms at her side instead of stretched out over her head, ever fearful that her exposed underarms would prove too irresistable a target to some wicked passerby who just might reach down and tickle them! The skin really was the most delicate white, tender and probably not used to being touched. I fully intended to touch them a great deal!
"Okay, thanks. Now if you could take off your shoes and socks and get one more picture we'll be all through here for today." My voice broke on the last word. I couldn't seem to swallow. She sat down on a chair andbegan untying her shoes.
"I don't understand," she said, puzzled. "Why do you need pictures of my *feet*?" She started pulling off her socks.
"I need to map precise areas of ticklishness."
"H-how...how do you d-do that?" She was stuttering all of the sudden. Interesting.
"Well, I computerize the image, superimpose a grid onto that image and record electrical brain activity in response to specific stimulus appliedto each region on the grid." I set a chair in front of her and lifted her legs onto it so that the soles of her feet faced directly into the camera. "Then Itake the rather complex waveform, have the computer do a fourier analysis on it to isolate the separate elements, then compare those elements to those of all of my other test subjects."
"You're going to tickle my feet?"
"Well, in a word... er, yes. Smile!" I took the picture.