Our daughter is now four and is a very active child. She runs, jumps and climbs over, under and into everything.
Recently she started playing that favorite childhood game of avoiding the floor and walking on furniture, pillows or whatever. She says it’s to avoid the crocodiles.
I remember this game. But in the version I played the floor was hot molten lava.
So consider this a poll. What did you avoid as a kid? What do your children avoid? Crocodiles? Lava? Quicksand? Pirahna?
I think I’ve had lava, snakes and crocodiles in my childhood. 
Fang’s bedroom floor seems to be inhabited by alligators IN lava.
We were always avoiding the “graboids” from Tremors.
:eek: Those are some talented gators.
Sharks!
When I was six years old I read a wonderful short story, “The Wish,” by Roald Dahl. In the story, a child tries to walk across a patterned carpet by stepping only on the yellow parts, while avoiding the red (fiery hot coals) and the black (poisonous snakes). The story scared the bejabbers out of me, but it gave me ideas about the patterned carpet in our living room, and I spent hours trying to get from one side of the room to the other without being bitten by the snakes or burned by the hot coals. At night I would dream about the carpet hazards. It became an obsession that lasted for several years.
Well, see? They’re super.
Radioactive peanut butter.
Ours was always lava.
Either bottomless pits, very deep chasms, or pits with spikes at the bottom. I blame copious amounts of Mario Brothers and other videogames.
I have a fond memory of taking walks with my dad when I was in elementary school. I would walk on the curb and try not to fall off onto either the road or the sidewalk. I was the great Johndini! hahaha good times.
Stepping on the floor would make the bombs go off.
Alligators in lava is a famous dish in both Hawaii and central Florida.
A musical link that seems appropriate: http://www.tomsmithonline.com/freestuff/oddio/RFL_CYE.mp3
I’m afraid the link goes directly to play the song, so expect it to start playing immediately.
Lava
Not having heard of any of these, I apparently made up my own version. The walls, floor and ceiling and everything beyond them were . . . nothing. Deep space. Black with stars in all directions. Only the furniture was solid (and apparently had its own gravity and atmosphere). As long as I stayed on the furniture I was ok, otherwise I’d be sucked into oblivion.
Radioactive, boiling acid, of course.
IIRC, pirates.
quicksand, watched a lot of tarzan movies.
Oh, yeah, sometimes we had quicksand, too!