To me, getting tickled on the sides feels like getting electrocuted.
A couple of years ago I had an ugly confrontation with an uncle who tickled me in a busy restaurant as I arrived to take my seat. Now who on Earth finds it funny, let alone approppriate, to tickle a man in his mid-40's in public like that?
This uncle worked in mining all his life and horse-play was part of the work-place culture at the time. Whatever his tickling technique was, he must have learned it underground. The touch of his finger tips was lighter, more subtle that down feathers, but what a
DEVASTATING effect! I went into an epilepsy-like seizure as he surprised me from behind. Needless to say, that incident put a bit of a rift between myself and him.
My views on this? It is neither a joke, nor funny, nor a gesture of affection, nor an expression of love.
TICKLERS BEWARE!

A couple of years while at a church banquet the pastor decided to tickle me, I freaked and came close to
having a meltdown and a coronary episode. I'll have nothing to do with him or his ministry. As for the other