Ok here's a couple of tips for you younger people when presented with "tempting situations." Two words: DO IT! You see a sole peeking out from under a blanket, or a foot dangling off the arm of a couch, a friend's mom someone doing yoga in front of you with her foot inches from you? A friend's wife stretched out during a game night with a bare or socked foot inches from your reach? TICKLE IT!
Some crucial bits of advice though:
1. Never "caress" or slowly stroke. That's creepy and inappropriate. NEVER be sexual about it. Be fun.
2. Do it intentionally, and look the person in the eyes if possible. For two reasons: A, you want to show that you're deliberately doing something playful and funny to them, NOT sneaky or creepy, and B, her reactions are half the fun!
3. Consider adding "Are you ticklish?" while you're tickling in a matter of fact and playful way. You can avoid being creepy if you get the tone right.
4. Lastly, if you're deliberate, you can REALLY get some good tickling in. Ideally it's two hands, eight fingertips, scribbling two ticklish arches simultaneously. None if this "quick poke with one finger" bs. Go big or go home.
All of the fears you have, "what people will think" or whatever. Trust me, it's all in your head. Nobody cares. So long as you do it right and don't make it weird, DO IT and have fun.
Quick story: My friend and I are teenagers and we're swimming at a pool, and his mom is there with us sunbathing. She is GORGEOUS. Tanned brunette who was a spitting image of jaclyn smith, just with jet black hair. I always wondered what her feet looked like but never saw them until that day. It's sunny out, she's got a black one piece on, and she's laying on a beach chair reading a book while my friend and I are playing in the deep end. Just us three, no one else. I decide at my young age that I'm going to tickle her feet. I'm going to do it. My heart is racing, waiting for her to get into a position where her feet are positioned to tickle, and after a while it finally comes. She adjusts herself in the chair and now her feet are dangling over the arm of the chair, ankles crossed. This is it! I've got to do it!! I am second guessing myself, again heart beating a mile a minute, and I muster the courage to go over to her, and I walk up, and see these gorgeous, dark red painted nails, tanned feet, creamy bottoms, looking just absolutely scrumptious, and just about the perfect height for tickling, right in front of me and I get closer and closer and I'm about to do it and...I chicken out. "What are you reading?" I asked my friends mom, and that was the end of it. Never got the memory, never got the tickle, lost my opportunity, which never came again.
That would be the last time I chickened out when presented with such opportunities.
The moral, again: DO IT. Life moves fast. These opportunities don't come as often as you might think. If you do it right, don't be weird, be playful and nonchalant about it, you can create AMAZING tickling memories. But you gotta do it right.
I've been presented with probably hundreds of other situations like that in my lifetime since then, big and small, and I always go for the tickle. It's never ever backfired, and I have zero regrets.
It's worth it, trust me!! DO IT! 🙂