Calf Rope

When I was little, my dad would tickle me until I was forced to say, “calf rope.” I hated to say calf rope because it always meant giving up—and I actually enjoyed the attention from my dad. I would try to break away from his grip and run to safety.

The expression “calf rope” is actually in Webster’s Dictionary: “a cry of surrender.” The origin of “calf rope” is unclear. Texans say they have been using the expression for over 100 years, but then once again, everything good comes out of Texas?! Wonder if Windex was invented in Texas?  

When our children were preschoolers, we would have tickling time with each of them. As with most parents, this all started when they were babies. Tickling is an element of social bonding. A mother tickles her baby, and the baby smiles or laughs. The mother continues to tickle her baby and again she gets the same response. This is a form of communication between the infant and parent.

I had hoped to teach the phrase “calf rope” to our grandchildren while tickling them, but their parents beat me to it. Being a parent has advantages over being a grandparent in that the parents get to spend exponentially more time with their children than we grandparents get to spend with our grandchildren. Therefore, through the past 20 years, whenever I tickled one of our preschool grandkids, they invariably said, “uncle,” “I give up,” or ----

Have you ever tried to tickle yourself? You can’t do it because you can’t surprise your own brain. The brain knows our movements before we make them. Somewhere in our brain, a prediction is made about the sensation our hand will produce, and that prediction suppresses the tickling response.

As an adult I have psyched myself to where I don’t laugh when someone tries to tickle me. Tickling is reciprocity. If the person being tickled doesn’t react to the tickler, then tickling is not very much fun. My grandkids have told me that I am not fun because I don’t laugh when they try to tickle me. So, I started feigning laughter just to make them happy.

EVERYONE has stories of bad experiences with customer service reps, but I try to make them laugh at some point in our conversation. Granted, there have been occasions when I wanted to give them a piece of my mind and did not care if they laughed or not, but, generally, I try to make them laugh. Sometimes it just does not work. They are too “professional” to laugh, or they just did not understand my pun (especially when the customer service rep is in another country).

I was talking with a customer service rep on the phone last week. She asked me a question and I added a little humor in my response, and the rep laughed out loud. She thanked me for making her laugh and said that I was the first person she had ever talked to who intentionally tried to make her laugh. Before we concluded our call, she thanked me again for a good laugh.

During the years of living in West Africa, we learned many proverbs in the More’ language. My favorite is “A good laugh is better than a chicken leg.” That may not mean a lot to those who don’t know that the people we worked with were only able to eat some kind of meat on the average of every 4-6 weeks. That helps you to understand more fully the importance of laughter in the Mossi people group culture.

Laughter is powerful. God gave us the ability to laugh, and the Bible mentions laughter and happiness multiple times in both the Old and New Testaments. Sometimes it might be hard to laugh if you’re going through a difficult situation, but finding something to laugh about can be a powerful tool for overcoming troubles.

Mark Twain said, “The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”

Laughter is therapy. Carry the spirit of laughter with you wherever you go.

Interesting trivia: Ancient Romans provided punishment through tickling: They tied offenders down, soaked their feet in salt, and had goats lick it off (Robert R. Provine, professor of psychology at the University of Maryland).