London is the capital of Paris*

“I’m sure I’m not Ada,” she said, “for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine doesn’t go in ringlets at all, even when I slave away for hours with the curling wand and use product and everything.”

“Besides,” continued Tatiana as she fanned herself with the White Rabbit’s quaint antique wooden fan trimmed in navy silk ribbon, “I don’t like the name Ada at all. It is so unglamorous. Not like my name.”

“And I’m sure I can’t be Mabel, for I know all sorts of things and she, oh! she knows such a very little! She’s the sort who would show her ankles in public,” Tatiana continued her snide internal monologue, forgetting for the moment that she was a giantess and sitting cross-legged on a tiled floor in a most unladylike fashion.

“I don’t like the name Ada at all. It is so unglamorous…”

Tatiana tossed the white kid gloves about thoughtfully. “Let me see: four times five is twelve, and London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome – no, that’s all wrong. I’m certain! I must have been changed for Mabel! I’ll try and say ‘How doth the little—’”

How doth the little snake
Weave its snakey little way
Through the grass and take
Me for its prey?

How cheerfully he seems to smile,
And speaks with lying tongue
Of merely basking in the sun,
Yet strangling me all the while.

“I’m sure those are not the right words,” said poor Tatiana, and her eyes filled with tears again as she went on, “I must be Mabel after all.”

Tatiana mournfully gazed at the large pool of tears, and just moments before she wholly gave way to hysterics she suddenly remembered. The absinthe! It was surely all crocodile tears, she told herself, and cheered up immediately.

Any moment now she’d shrink magically back to her proper size and slip through that door into that lovely garden.

If only it were that easy for all of us.

*With apologies to Lewis Carroll for butchering his text.