Tickle torture. That’s what I kept reminiscing about after watching the recently-released film version of the children’s book classic “Where the Wild Things Are”.

The movie, like the book, features young Max and reflects on that scary precipice of mid-childhood - that point between being a wild little beast who throws a fit to try to get what you want and realizing the repercussions of your emotional outbursts and how your needs coexist with your parents’, your siblings’, your family’s needs. The film managed to be a lovely, touching portrait of one boy’s empathy epiphany and how much we can learn from our own internal “wild things”.

When Max suddenly bites his mother’s arm in a confused emotional moment (anger mixed with fear of being ignored or abandoned as family dynamics change), I remembered the way I used to torture my little sister with tickles when we were kids.

We were good-natured kids, my sister and me, rarely fighting and never hitting each other or anything like that. But tickling would start really innocently. We’d just be playing and I’d poke at her, a small tickle and then we’d both fall into a fit of giggles. Sometimes I’d stop after a few giggles, but there were other times when I’d push it a little too far, and what started as a tickle would become torturous to her. “Stop! Stop!” she’d shout between pained laughs. At least once I remember it all ending in tears.

Reliving those times as an adult watching a movie, I realized how quickly we can slip from being playful to being hurtful. But how can something as simple and innocent as tickling become violent? And is it possible to tickle ourselves? [Read more →]