Fun with a Ticklish Aunt
This is an interesting topic to me. It gets to the old nature v. nurture debates about which I know very little, but have speculative opinions due to personal experience, limited though that might be.
I grew up in a family where there was a good deal of tickling. I had some older brothers that would gang up on anyone in he family that was ticklish, and as they grew into their teen years, they had no safe words in their vocabulary. Up to about the age of eight or nine, I hated getting tickled, much to the delight, I think, of these older brothers. Somewhere the reaction crossed over to one of pure enjoyment, I suspect around the time that Mother Nature applied a squirt or two of androgen.
One of my aunts in this tickling family was, I now know, a tickle babe of the first order. I suspect she had a true tickle fetish, although there was zip that was sexual about the tickling that took place in this group. It was all just for fun.
However, she was always getting tickle wars going, and would form alliances to get her nephews and nieces held down by others. Then she would appear on the scene as the Grand Tickler, and it sez right here SHE had no safe words in HER vocabulary. She was an unmerciful tease. If she was tickling one of her nephews, during little breaks to let them take in a tiny bit of air and beg for mercy, she would say things like, "Are we ticklish? I thought only girls were ticklish!" Then she would attack the ribs or feet again.
When she had you so desperate for air you were sure you were about to die, she would say things to the ones holding you down that when you have someone reacting like this, you never, never stop tickling until the person you are tickling actually takes a breath. She said as long as someone is laughing or trying to laugh they are having too much fun no matter what they say between times.
She could take it better than she could give it. She would say things like she grew up with brothers that tickled and she has yet to have anyone make her give up. She would sneak up behind her nephews poking them on the ribs one after the other until finally, one of them, often my oldest brother, would say, "Lets get her!" Then she would behave all frightened and try to run away. When I grew older I realized the obvious. She wanted to get held down and tickled and every bit as mercilessly as she tickled.
There were numerous tickle events when she was in the neighborhood. She was an exremely fun woman to have about. I don't know if she caused my own tickle bug. Somehow I doubt it. Yet I can't help to think she intensified it.