The Floor is Lava

The Floor is Lava

It had sounded so simple at first. “I dare you Mommy. I dare you!” It was mid-afternoon on a wet, drizzly Wednesday. I’d been seated on the end of the dark brown leather L-shaped sectional with Lottie, my precocious four-year-old extraordinaire. We were snuggling and watching Peppa Pig. Peppa and George were happily jumping in and out of puddles, Peppa had just told George how much she loved splashing, and Lottie decided she wanted to play too. She was hopping happily across the floor when suddenly she stopped, scrambled onto the couch, and yelled at me, “The floor is lava!”

“No, sweetheart,” I answered. “it’s fine. You can puddle jump on the floor.”

“No, Mommy, no!” Lottie was adamant. “The floor is lava!”

“Well, okay then,” I told her. You better stay up on the sofa then.”

“No Mommy,” said Lottie. “We’re gonna have a ‘venture!”

“And what is this adventure going to be?” I asked.

“We have to get from here to the kitchen, Mommy. And the floor is lava.”

“Honey, it’s a long way to get from here to the kitchen if the floor is lava.”

“I dare you, Mommy. I dare you!” And there it was. The ultimate challenge from a four-year-old to the woman who had once held the lava-avoiding record among her siblings, both of whom happened to be male, and older. How hard could it be?

‘You’re on,” I told Lottie. “Just be careful. And no jumping on the couch!”

“I’ll go first,” stated my intrepid daughter. And off she started across the shorter end of the sectional. I watched in wonder as she made a stop three-quarters of the way across the long section, reached down, grabbed her Minnie Mouse sofa chair, and dragged it along with her to the end of the couch. She positioned it by the side of the sofa, and calmly climbed down into it, kneeled, then turned around and looked at me. “Your turn, Mommy.”

“But I thought we had to get all the way to the kitchen,” I said. “You’re only at the dining room. You’re still on the carpet. You still have to get across the wood floor and onto the tile in the kitchen.”

“Oh, I’m not finished, Mommy. But you better get started if you want to catch me!”

I tried not to laugh. There was no way Lottie was going to get that chair to the kitchen from her current position without touching the floor. So I began my way across the sofa. I started by walking, but surprisingly (NOT!) discovered my balance was not quite as good as it had been twenty-five years earlier, so I resorted to crawling. I looked up to see Lottie scooting, yes, scooting! herself across the dining room floor in that silly little chair, her hands holding tight to Minnie’s ears to guide her way. She was halfway to the dining room table, so she still had a fairly good distance to cover. Deciding I better up my game, I moved my speed up a notch heading toward the end of the sofa, then realized I had no handy dandy chair to help me. Unless Tinkerbell was going to stop by and sprinkle some fairy dust on me, I needed to find another route. Okay, there was a dining room chair, and if I stretched one hand out to the wall and balanced myself, I should be able to reach it. From my precariously perched position on the sofa arm, I launched my body toward the wall, my palm luckily making solid contact. I struggled to grasp the back of the closest dining room chair and finally, after three shaky attempts (thank you, Vinyasa yoga) I managed to grab it. Thank goodness I’d opted to pick the set with spindle backed seats.  I pulled the chair toward me. It was a lot heavier than I’d expected. Of course, I’d never moved it using one hand while balanced on one knee before either. But, success. I maneuvered myself into the chair and looked over. Lottie was still scooting along, an inch at a time, giggling like she was going to burst. I had a momentary vision of The Little Engine That Could. I could almost hear her whispering, “I know I can, I know I can.” The rest of my journey should be easy terrain, I thought. Just a short crawl across the table, into another dining chair, and then a somewhat awkward hop from there into the kitchen. Lottie looked back, saw my progress, and decided to try a new tactic. Reaching the pantry, she pulled the door open and used it to help her swing herself toward the kitchen. She was running out of hardwood and almost to the tile. I couldn’t lose this dare! Crawling across the table was killing my knees. It was made of mahogany and my bones creaked each time I moved. It occurred to me that I had warned the family repeatedly about protecting the tabletop and here I was, probably scratching the hell out of it with my shoes, but I’d gone too far to stop now.  After what seemed like five minutes (but was probably only about 30 seconds), I reached my jumping off peak – the last obstacle – the last dining room chair. I stood up on it, my hands on the ceiling for balance, preparing to leap into the kitchen.

Suddenly the interior garage door opened. In walked my husband, Mike. He looked at me, arms raised above my head, standing on our good furniture. He looked at Lottie, quickly approaching our kitchen in her little chair. I imagined his words even before I heard them.

“What the heck is going on here?”

I paused. Lottie did not. She tumbled out of her chair and onto the kitchen floor.

“I won, Mommy, I won! I won the dare!”

Mike just stared at me, an incredulous look on his face.

“Um, you can’t come in here,” I said. “The floor is lava!”

Copywrite Fran Calhoon 2021