◊
I am the Tickle Monster. You can not hide. The Tickle Monster will find you. He will make you laugh from your bones.
Aha! The Tickle Monster found you! You can try to run. You won’t get far. The Tickle Monster will chase you. The Tickle Monster is faster. Ah, yes, the Tickle Monster has got you!
Now he will tickle you. He will tickle you until you’re squealing. He will tickle you until you’re crying with laughter. He will tickle you until your ribs start getting sore. Then he will tickle you more, more, more!
You can’t stop the Tickle Monster. The Tickle Monster is stronger. The Tickle Monster’s hands are so big. The Tickle Monster’s fingers are so strong.
He will tickle until you are begging. He will tickle until you are gasping and pleading. He will tickle until you almost stop breathing. He will tickle until you think you’re dying.
Then he will suddenly stop. He’ll leave you crying and gasping and shaking on the floor. The Tickle Monster can’t even play with you, Tommy. You’re such a little pussy boy.
◊


It’s easier to socialize a young man into being a warrior than to be a father. You can do that in the marine corp. And men are geared for that in some way, but to socialize them into being fathers is a different matter. We should be honoring fathers instead of attacking them. … Because it’s important for the son to hear the fathers say how important fathering has been to them. How important it is in their life. How it’s twice as important as anything they thought they were doing in business. Young men need to learn that. So I say it’s as hard to socialize a young man into being a decent and responsible father as to socialize them into being a decent and responsible artist. In the sibling society you’re supposed to have no training and become an artist in fifteen minutes, be a father in fifteen minutes. No, so we have to decide, do we want to allow the military to keep deciding what masculinity is. Or would we like to take some part in it ourselves? And I understand the amount of anger that women feel over the patriarchies demeaning of women, my wife and my mother feel tremendous anger about that. And yet all men are lumped together and we say all men are rapists or all men are patriarchal, that’s not socializing men to be responsible fathers. It’s shaming them again.
http://www.pbs.org/kued/nosafeplace/interv/bly.html