If you happened to be near Angell Street on Saturday night, you might have heard the sound of an active volcano covering a house in lava.
“The minute we agreed to do it, I knew it was going to get way out of hand, but anything to tire them out, you know?”
When you’re in quarantine with three children under the age of 11, it seems fair to use whatever tools are at your disposal to keep them occupied.
In this instance, the solution was imaginary molten hot magma.
“My son asked if we could play, but he wanted to do the whole house, and he pitched it to me and my husband, because– The kids play it in their rooms, but it usually gets them so worked up that we only let them play for an hour once or twice a week even when they’re on school vacation, but we were so worried about them getting nervous with the news and everything that we said — and he really did pitch it. Like, he sat us down on the couch with his brother and sister next to him and he said, ‘We want to play the Floor is Lava with you and Dad.’ I thought it was sweet that he wanted us to play with him, and then he said, ‘But it has to be the whole house.’”
Her husband thought it was a great idea.
“I love that game. I used to play it in college in the dorm and we’d do it for–We did it for three days once where we had chairs set up so the minute you walked into the common room you had to stand on the chairs to get to your room and then you had to leave the door to your room open so people could see if your feet were touching the floor. I never lost. At the end of the three days, it was just me and this other guy and he quit. I’m the one who taught the kids the game.”
She wasn’t exactly enthused about the idea, especially when she found out there wouldn’t be a time limit.
“At first I fought for, um– We can do this for a little while and then you’re going to do something else, but they were trying to say they could play the game and do other things and that was the whole point. That you go about your life while not touching the floor, and see if you can live under these new circumstances and adjust to it, and I thought, you know, ‘Wow, what a great exercise this could be when normally it’s just a stupid game.’ There might really be something we could learn from playing this about how people can adapt to things and so I agreed to no time limit.”
Two days later, she was living in a Mad Max movie.
“I found my husband’s old skateboard in the garage, and I came up with this system where I could pull myself from room to room using these bungee cords that we had, and so my kids kept trying to knock me off the skateboard using tennis balls. They would hide where I couldn’t see them and then tennis balls would just come flying out at me.”
Her husband was also surprised how quickly his children turned into the schoolboys from Lord of the Flies.
“Let me tell you something — they are viscous. I was perched up on a counter — squatting down, hanging onto this lighting fixture we have that’s bolted in — and my kids are on the couch yelling ‘Drop! Drop! Drop!’ My wife’s in the other room yelling ‘You hear that? Those are your kids!’ and I’m, like, I can’t believe how blood-thirsty they are, but I’m also kind of proud? Because I didn’t think they were that tough. I know they like to goof around with each other and they can get pretty banged up, but I didn’t know that when push came to shove, they’d be cheering on their dad falling to his death.”
When asked who of the three children is the most militant, they both answer right away–
“Our daughter.”
She’s 8 years old, and up to now, her parents had always thought of her as the quiet one.
“It’s funny how you think you know your kids and then you start spending every waking hour of the day with them, when you haven’t done that since they were — um, since they went off to school, and now you’re seeing that your daughter — who you thought was fairly shy — is secretly a mercenary. She’s set up traps all over the house. Really elaborate traps. I got out of bed the other morning, and I went to grab the skateboard, and when I pulled on it, something snapped, and the skateboard went flying across the room. She rigged some kind of system where– I think she thought I would go with it when it went. I could have been killed. That’s my daughter. I heard her laughing in her bedroom when it happened. When this is all over, I’m sending her to one of those psychiatrists that talks to serial killers.”
The game is still ongoing as of this writing, and so far, nobody’s dropped — except the champ.
“The chair gave out under me, and I — when I tell you I screamed — I wasn’t hurt, but I screamed ‘Nooooo!’ and my wife and the kids cheered for a solid five minutes. They’re really bad people — all of them. I love them, but they are the cruelest human beings I’ve ever met in my life.”
I’m tempted to believe him, but then again, can you really trust a sore loser covered in lava?
