Pressure Points

It seems that my dad had a knack of finding which points on my body would lead directly to a nerve. Pinching the nape of your neck if me or my cousin were acting up was one of his favorites. He was very strong and had powerful hands but he knew how to use his strength and never abused it with us.

That's how you get respect. You have the power but you choose not to use it.

Another one he liked to have fun with was the hand shake grind. With my little hand in his he would place his thumb on my index finger knuckle and his third finger (his hand was a lot bigger than my 6 year old hand) on the knuckle of my pinkie finger. He would then proceed to move his fingers back and forth causing my knuckles to grind against each other. Man, that was painful but he was definitely holding back. The bizarre thing was that while I was looking for information regarding this for the blog I found quite a number of websites dedicated to discussing this. I even found a counter technique... Point your index finger toward the other persons wrist and it's supposed to prevent the knuckles from rubbing over each other. Ah, where was the internet when I was young?

Then there's the one we both enjoyed. He'd grab the muscles on either side just above my knee and squeeze, REPEATEDLY. It really tickled. I begged him to stop and he would, eventually. Sometimes he tickled me till I cried because I was laughing so hard. I think that, because of this, I now have an immunity to being tickled.

Now that I'm a parent I can somewhat understand the twisted pleasure of doing the tickling thing. Not only that but I will pass down the wisdom of the ages to the next generation.