"What? What do you mean?" I almost dropped my clipboard.
She was hurriedly pulling on her shoes. "I'm s-sorry to wuh-wasteyour t-time. I can't s-stand being tickled. I'm sorry. Keep your s-seventy five dollars."
"Seventy five dollars? Did the ad say seventy five dollars? You geta HUNDRED and seventy five dollars for this." I silently thanked my quick mind. "There must have been a mistake in the paper. I'll have to phone them tomorrow."
"A hundred and seventy five? I'll have to think about it." She grabbed her jacket and walked to the door. "T-tickle my f-feet... I don't think I can handle that."
"Of course you can." I opened the door for her. "I'll call you Thursday after the computer simulations are done and set up an appointment. Bye!" I closed the door behind her. Leaning back against it I let out aheavy sigh. My knees were weak but I stood up again and went to develop the film.
I waited till Friday to call. I really wanted to seem nonchalant about this. For my research strictly half of my test subjects were female. Of the men, most weren't even the least bit ticklish. But the screams that came from my lab when I "tested" the women ... aaah. The aim of my research was, partly, to discover the origins of ticklishness and, specifically, to discover what differentiates a ticklish person from one who is not.
There are many popular theories to explain the first question. One says it's an evolutionary reflex to protect humans from dangerous insects and arachnids which flourished in the prehistoric jungles, much the same as the reflex in horses that makes their haunches twitch and tails slap at flies. This might be a contributing factor but is wholly inadequate to explain why we're most ticklish under the arms or on the soles of the feet,places where insects are *least* likely to land.
The theory I favor is that ticklishness evolved as a *play* reflex, like that in kittens or puppies. An essential reflex, it teaches an animal,while young, to defend itself and to fight competitors, defending vulnerables pots such as sides and ribs where a slashing claw might damage vital organs. Any theory such as this is impossible to prove. One can only gather evidence to support it. As a preliminary to my research I recorded literally days of EEG's from kittens while playing. Not an easy task, I assure you. It's quite difficult to induce kittens to play with one another while connected to hundreds of feet of wires all attached to a myriad of electrodes implanted directly into the brain. Nonetheless, I somehow managed to glean two or three hours of usable data. Much easier to answer is the second question: Why are some of us ticklish and others not? Is it merely a matter of temperment or is there some measurable physiological difference? Children who stutter are 20 times more likely to be ticklish than those who do not. My evidence at that time seemed to indicate that there is a particular region of the brain(adjacent to the region suspected to be responsi ble for stuttering!) which inhibits ticklishness as a person grows older, or, as the case may be, failsto do so. If this proves to be the case it woul d be a natural step to develop a method by which micro currents could be introduced into the brain insuch a way as to neutralize this "tickle-inhibitor" efectively rendering*anyone* not only ticklish, but EXTREMELY ticklish.
Anyway, as I was saying, I tried to seem casual as I spoke to herover the telephone. It wasn't easy. I've rarely had somebody who was as ticklish as she claimed to be for a test subject. It would be fantastic for my research (I fully expected to find that characteristic 14.7 KHz ripple put out by the "inhibitor" almost entirely missing from the fourier analysis of her EEG) but even more, it was going to be HOT!
She said she had thought it over and had finally decided to go through with it. I could almost *hear* the landlord banging on her door demanding the rent. So I set up an appointment for Monday afternoon andthen proceeded to have a very long weekend.
"Hello, Michelle, come in." I beamed my brightest smile (being careful to first remove all lecherous elements from it) and shook her hand vigorously. "Let me take your jacket."
She didn't look at me but rather continued to stare at the floor.
"I really want to thank you for agreeing tohelp me out like this. This research requires a LOT of test subjects ... you should relax. This won't take long."
She looked up from the floor and forced a smile, following me to the door of my lab. I unlocked it and led her into the sound-proof room, a veritable christmas tree of flashing lights and clicking, beeping sounds.Along one wall was the mainframe computer (shared by everyone at the institute) along another, medical monitoring equipment: EEG's, EKG's,machines for analysing blood chemistry, galvanic monitors to record electrical conductivity of the skin. Equipment choked the periphery of thelab.
But in the center of the room was the tickle-table. It was this table onto which Michelle locked her gaze, her eyes slowly growing wide. Shiny,stainless steel and black leather padding, sturdy leather straps for the wrists, elbows, ankles, knees and upper thighs, it positively dazzled in thebright lights of the lab. She stopped, frozen at the door.
Suddenly fearful she would bolt after all, I walked quickly to the desk drawer, unlocked it and pulled an envelope out. "I hope you don'tmind if I pay you in cash," I said as I wielded the wad of twenties. "One hundred and seventy five dollars. Here you go." I counted it into her hand.
She took another step forward into the lab and stopped again.
"Come on, come on," I thought to myself.
"What do you want me to do?" she said, finally.