My nephew is a climber. If you are not around kids a lot, the deep and terrifying reality of that statement might not fully register with you. Imagine a 5 year old with no fear and virtuously limitless resources of motive and opportunity to leave the ground and rise vertically. That is a climber. Any and every object, no matter how unstable, can and will be used to help this young man achieve his goals of greater elevation. This picture is merely a glimpse into to curious adventure of said nephew. He loves climbing so much that even his favorite board game is climbing based, you guessed it, chutes and ladders. Here is a story about my nephew. The names are changed to protect the guilty.
Two brothers play chutes and ladders together on the living room floor while mom is cooking in the other room. Up the ladders they climb until the ominous square of doom sucks them down the cruel shoot. They notice a strange looking toy chest high atop a bookshelf inthe corner of the room, old and wooden with leather straps keeping it closed. But light is cracking through the seams. The two then begin grabbing everything they can find to reach the chest. The sofa, a rocking chair, an office chair, the shoe rack, and theboxes of five puzzles and 3 board games that they were tired of anyways. As they reach the top and peer into the chest the wobbly stack of furniture give way and fall into the chest. They land softly in a pile of leaves and find themselves in a giant magical version of chutes and ladders! Sweet. They look at each other in amazement brush themselves off and get to it. Up they go, over here and over there, dodging chutes and leaping across squares of doom. They are just about to reach the end when they hit the mother of all chutes, you know the one, and fall, down down down. Its scary and fun at the same time. They hit the ground and find themselves back in the living room surrounded by fallen furniture and puzzle pieces. Then mom comes around the corner with a not so happy look on her face.
Enjoy