A Tropical Childhood

I was kind of surprised last night when Eliot offhandedly mentioned she had been told to not drink from the water fountain outside the girls' bathroom at school because there may be a tiny cobra in there. "We have to use the boys' one...just in case." Huh?!
This from the girl who is afraid of ants.
I'm thinking she's not clear on what a cobra is. I'm also thinking I don't want to be the one who tells her.
It seems fitting somehow that I am reading Alexandra Fuller's memoir about her African childhood. Maybe Eliot will one day write her memoir about growing up on the tropical island of Singapore.
Eliot is scared of crocodiles. I feel kind of guilty about that. When she was about five one of her bedtime stories was The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl (her request). It's a children's story but the illustrations of a crocodile disguising himself as a park bench or a see saw for unsuspecting children is amusing in a disturbing way. That reading choice made over two years ago may be the reason she still occasionally comes into my bed at 2 am reasoning: "I know crocodiles are in swamps but they could still crawl to our house because they do like children." Can't blame anybody but myself.