The Crocodile

August 2004

I feel like everybody knows somebody who has been in the Disney College Program, and as a result, everybody is probably at least marginally familiar with the infamous CP housing complex, Vista Way.

Vista Way is less like dormitories and more like really crappy townhouses; you will also be hard pressed to find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.  There are unsubstantiated (and likely false) rumors that Vista was named one of the top five hookup spots in the nation by Playboy magazine.  All I know is that they told me to avoid the hot tub unless my hepatitis shots were up to date.

Living, if only briefly, at Vista taught me not to be afraid of a lot of things, like hurricanes (a story for another time) and insects.  Let’s start with those.

Unlike real college, you seldom get to choose your roommate on the College Program–it’s left up to a random draw, and insanely difficult to switch.  I wound up in a three bedroom apartment with five other girls.  Three of them were American, like me…except, not like me.  For example, they considered bourbon a breakfast condiment.  I think at least two of them were named Ashley.  I try to suppress those memories, to be honest.

The other two were from Hong Kong, and they HATED us.  Like, with the fire of a thousand suns.  To this day, I’m not entirely sure why–it’s not like we’d really had a chance to MAKE them hate us.  Whenever they weren’t at work, using the bathroom, or actively microwaving dinner, they were in their room with the door shut.  I lived there for three months, and I’m convinced that at least one of them never bothered to even learn the rest of our names.  If they happened to be venturing out of their lair and crossed paths with any of the rest of us, they booked back to safety while giving us a death stare.

I’m still not sure if this was a cultural thing, a language barrier thing, or a rude and slightly creepy human thing.

One day, when the other three Americans were out buying more breakfast condiments, I opted to take advantage of having no one to look over my shoulder and judge, and took a rare moment to play some video games.  Much to my surprise, after a short while there was a knock on my bedroom door.  I was slightly taken aback by this, because I’d thought I was the only one home.

The only one in most of the home, anyway.

I opened the door to find one of the girls from Hong Kong.  No sign of the other one, which worried me slightly, because I thought they went everywhere in pairs, like those twins from The Shining.

She looked at me, hesitantly.  “Uh, Laura…”

I was fully astonished by this.  Apparently, at least one of them did know my name.

She spoke slowly and carefully, selecting her words from what was clearly an unfamiliar mental dictionary.

“Are you…afraid…of…the crocodile?”

“Crocodile?”  I repeated, both confused and incredulous.  Was this a metaphorical question meant to teach me some kind of new-age philosophical lesson?

She seemed relieved, and also desperate.  “Yes–come and look!”  She took off for the living room.

“There’s a crocodile in our living room?”  I asked, my voice dripping with bemusement, as I reluctantly followed her.

When I reached the living room, she was standing there, gesturing frantically at the problem.

“It was flying!”  She wailed.  “It was in our room!”

Oooookay.  She hasn’t meant crocodile; she’d meant cockroach, and the one we were facing was the biggest and baddest species around–this bugger, specifically.

“Kill it please,” she said, looking at me with puppy dog eyes.

I sucked in a breath and weighed my options.

Smashing it would create a large, gooey splotch of bug guts on the carpet that I didn’t feel like cleaning–plus, the things are notoriously resilient, and I doubted even a good stomp would kill it.  We kept a can of Raid under the sink to deal with the fruit flies (again, a story for another time).  I grabbed it, aimed, and fired.

The bug wasn’t even stunned; it started running for the nearest cover.  My new…friend?  started shrieking; I rolled my eyes and grabbed the Swiffer broom.  No way was that thing getting loose in the house.  With an uncharacteristically precise swing, I hit that bug like a croquet ball, sending it whirling through the air a few times before it landed on its back.

I’d only made it angry.  It waved its antennae at me in rage.

With a Rambo-like yell, I emptied the entire can of Raid on the creature.  A full minute passed, and the thing was still alive, legs flailing in agony.

“Open the front door!”  I ordered my sidekick, but she stood paralyzed with fear, realizing that it would require her to pass near the monster bug.  Growling with irritation, I did it myself, then Swiffer-golfed the unhappy creature outside to die on our front stoop.

“You are soooooo brave!”  My new friend declared, eyes shining with admiration.

“Any time,” I said smoothly, swaggering a bit like Harrison Ford on my way back to my video game.

Things changed in the apartment after that:  I was now the only American the two Asians would talk to.  The Ashleys were utterly mystified by this.

Unfortunately, though their general manner toward me had improved, there was really only one topic my new friends chose to speak to me about…and only on those occasions when it was rendered necessary.

This being Central Florida, those occasions were frequent.

It quickly got out of hand:

“Uh…Laura?”

“…Yeah?”

“There is…a little…spider…near…the toaster.”

“…Okay, well, I’m kind of in the shower right now.  You can smash it with a paper towel, or you saw where we keep the Raid.”

Silence.  That was worrying.

When I exited the bathroom, I found her standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring anxiously at the wall several feet away.

“Did you kill it?”  I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Uh…no.”

Grumbling, I grabbed a Kleenex and went to investigate.

“This thing is the size of a pencil eraser.  It’s really not that scary.”

“Kill it please.”

Rolling my eyes, I smashed the thing a little more angrily than I probably should have and threw it out.

“My hero!  You are so brave!”

“…Whatever.”

Annoying though it was at the time, I like to think that maybe, somewhere in China, someone still speaks reverently of Laura, Slayer of Bugs, Destroyer of Arachnids, She who Makes Exoskeletal Legs Tremble.  My legacy may yet live on.