Candice the Magnificent

Candice the Magnificent

Candice is an old friend of Kim’s and she has become a friend of mine as well.  She is a retired school teacher who gets more out of life than any five people you can mention.  I like that about Candice since I tend to believe that life is way too short to approach it timidly.  I like Candice’s moxie and zest for life.

The Urban Dictionary says of the name Candice, “A free spirit. Knows where to go or can find a way.  Confident, full of love and a loyal friend. Adventurous. Full of light.”  This is a perfect definition of the Candice I have come to know.

My own evidence of these traits traces back to a trip we planned to Akamal on the Mayan Riviera.  We had rented a house and invited friends and family, as is our habit.  We filled the house only to have one friend of Kim’s decide at the last moment to cancel.  She cancelled because she had been talked out of going by some friends who convinced her that Mexico was too dangerous due to all the drug cartels and the trafficking going on.  We tried to explain that the Mexican resort areas like Akamal were minimally affected by such things, but she was convinced otherwise and waved off.  She chose instead to stay at home in her west side subsidized apartment doing errands and tending to her cat.

Kim thought to call her old pal Candice and ask if she was up for a last minute low-cost trip to Mexico.  Candice had been planning a trip to Libya.  Yes, that would be the place that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi had acted as “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution of Libya” for forty-two years before he was killed in the most recent revolution.  It seems that the tour group that planned the Libyan excursion and had taken her payment was hoping that events there would cause all travelers to cancel so they could cancel the trip.  The one holdout was Candice, who said she would still go.  Finally, in the standoff, the tour company declared defeat and cancelled the trip anyway and Candice was now negotiating for her refund, which was theoretically due her, but not so readily available.

Candice is a travel warrior.  She is unafraid of a North African dictator.  She is bold enough to go where Americans choose not to go or are told not to go by the State Department.  Mexican drug lords?  Bring it on.  Candice was in.

While on that trip we snorkeled in clear lagoons, visited Tulum and its ancient Mayan ruins, went into cenotes for a taste of cave diving and even zip-lined into other open cenotes.  Candice was game for it all.  Imagine my surprise when one lazy afternoon being spent out by the pool I heard a shrill scream from the house.  It sounded like Candice, so I ran in to see if I could help.  I was expecting a tarantula spider at the very least.  What I found was Candice staring at her cell phone in disgust.

It seems that Candice had not powered down her smartphone or at least toggled off the data switch.  For three days her not-so-smartphone was downloading data feeds at her normal clip, but being charged Mexican highway robbery roaming rates.  The little bugger had racked up $500 in charges much to Candice’s chagrin.  As a fixed-income retiree on a strict budget, this was a disaster.  Had smartphones not been so expensive, I am certain I would have witnessed her throwing the damn thing against the white stucco wall.  Instead, amidst a flurry of expletives, she turned it off and threw it into the lead-lined safe in the room and punished the offending piece of technology by putting it into extreme solitary confinement.

Candice recovered from the episode, but learned a valuable lesson about traveling with technology.  She carried on with her exotic travels and is currently planning to spend a fortnight with us in Ireland this summer.  She has recently had a knee replaced, but that doesn’t seem to have slowed her down.

We went to the theater last night with Candice and I learned another thing of interest about her.  She is a natural-born revolutionary.  She explained that during her knee replacement surgery convalescence she has been hatching various plots for how to handle the problems of the world.  I do not want to get into specifics here because I sense that the NSA is most likely monitoring this blog with robotic AI-assisted scanning that might pick out the ideas espoused in her plots.  Plots is the correct word for these since they involve blowing up bad people by gathering them all in one place.  I am reminded of one of my favorite law enforcement sting operations.

In that operation, the Feds laid out the bait by sending sweepstake-like literature involving free Super Bowl tickets to a long list of convicted felons who were on the lam and at large.  To claim your winning tickets, all you had to do was appear at an office building in Florida (it seems many of these people tend to hang out in Florida).  An amazing 80% of the convicted felons showed up only to be put in handcuffs by US Marshals and escorted to jail.  This shows us several things.  First of all it doesn’t necessarily take a complicated plan to defeat evil, and secondly, convicted felons are mostly dumb as a bag of rocks.

So, Candice is off between now and our summer trip to Ireland scheming up plots to capture and dispose of all the evil people in the world.  Her initial focus is on rampant gun enthusiasts who cannot be trusted not to shoot any of us or our children on any given day.  She feels her current plan can dispose of 5,000 or more of these bad people with every go.  I like Candice’s fervor for the mission and while I am not an “ends justifies the means” kind of guy, I do sometimes wonder whether the only way to fight fire is with fire.  That said, I expect that as Candice’s knee gets less ornery, her approaches will get less ornery as well.

Like with the not-so-smartphone, you don’t want to get on Candice’s wrong side.  To invoke the spirit of this blog, “you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and you don’t mess around with Candice.”