What is your floor made of? Lava? That's what most say, but in Holly Gramazio's childhood, the floor was quicksand. Others say water, sharks, poison, electricity, piranhas, swamp, or just a void of nothingness. People didn't say wood or linoleum because they know we are talking about the game. It could be a game with rules, a group activity, or a solitary obsession.
The unifying characteristic is: acting as though the floor is forbidden. Inverting the standard behavioural rules of the gym or yard or living room, where the floor is for walking on and the furniture is very much not.
That doesn’t always mean avoiding the floor. Sometimes succumbing to the danger is the pleasure: a tiny quick step onto the carpet and a squeal at the sting of the lava; reaching down with a courageous hand to tease the sharks. I remember sitting on the beige carpet of my bedroom and imagining the quicksand as it crept up slowly over my legs, and then up my body, around my waist and higher and higher while I grabbed on hard to the leg of my bed so I could haul myself out at the last minute.
As long as there’s some rules or pretence about what happens when you touch the floor, the game is something I’m interested in.
Gramazio took a survey to see how universal the game is, and how it is viewed by people around the world. Read her insights from the responses about that game we all know. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Flickr user Kheng Cheng TOH)