Inspiration in Unlikely Places: Candy

The developments over the last nine months which plopped us is a Slough of Despond demand something to inspire us to do something, create something, change something, to be anything but we have been for almost nine months….trapped. We owe it to ourselves to ask who and what inspires us to think, feel, create, imagine. By engaging in the exercise, we may then be able to ask ourselves how we can be inspiring. With this simple ambition for the month of January, Janspiration, the following story reflects inspiration from unlikely people in the unlikeliest places.

Candy Langacer. My elementary school nemesis. The cutest girl in every grade of elementary school. MGM could not have engineered a cuter little girl than Candy. She had blond ringlets that twisted around her heart shaped face. Her peaches and cream complication was kissed with tiny blond freckles to match her hair. Black eyelashes fanned out over her big blue yes. She was so cute you didn’t know whether to hug her or punch her. She was beyond popular, she was adored. She stole my first boyfriend in the first grade. She beat me in the reading contest in second grade (by a page). In third grade, she won the American Heart Association jump rope contest and sold the most girl scout cookies. In 4th grade, she beat me out of the talent show with her square dance clog routine. I guess my rendition of The Sun Will come Out Tomorrow from the Broadway hit Annie just could not compete with her countryfied ho’ down complete with a tulle-lined gingham skirt. She beat me out of head cheerleader in the 5th grade, her cartwheels were exponentially better than mine. In 6th grade, I moved.

Despite the fact that she outdid me in just about everything, I liked Candy. I wanted her to like me. And, more than all of that, I loved going to her house.

Candy’s house was fun. It was cramped, unkempt and boisterous and unexpected, you never knew what was going to happen. Plus I loved the above-ground pool that swallowed her entire yard. Candy’s family was big, tall, and loud. They were coming and going people and they consumed her little house. When they sat down to have dinner it seemed like they were going to explode out the patio door right into the pool that was so close you could almost touch it from the kitchen table if the door was open. On nights when I was asked to stay over, Candy’s mom would take us to 7–11 at midnight and buy us Big Gulps and giant-sized bags of chips. We stayed up all night watching HBO, back when switching from regular TV to cable required you to hit the little box with three brown buttons and you never knew which button was going to get you to HBO, so you pressed each one and back again, toggling before anyone knew what “toggling” meant. I loved it.

Candy’s house was everything my house was not. I lived in a tony neighborhood, where the houses were larger, nicer, newer. Our pools were in the ground. As an only child, I had my own room and bathroom. As an only child of a young working mother, I had every room in the house to myself most of the time because my mom was not around much. Most of my days were spent alone. I was sure Candy never felt alone.

Then, one day Candy came to school with red spots all over her arms. Small red dots, similar to the kind a red felt tip marker might make. Her 5th grade entourage flocked to her side as she held out her red and splotchy arms for inspection.

“What happened to you?”

“I have a disease,” Candy responded with great seriousness.

“What disease?” We asked in unison like a Greek chorus.

“Heenocshonalinprepherin.”

“Huh?”

“Heenocshonalinprepherin. It’s very rare. I could die.”

Gasp, sigh, swoon. One of us might have fainted.

Poor, sweet, blond little Candy. She had a disease. She was going to die. She was immediately condemned to certain death.

Soon after we learned of Candy’s death sentence, she showed me her book. I was touched. She trusted me with her treasure. I was more than touched, I was flummoxed. I knew you could read a book but make a book? WRITE A BOOK? Candy wrote a book? I could not have been more impressed if Danielle Steel had walked in and handed me an autographed copy of one of her romance novels. The book had a three-hole punched construction paper cover connected together with little strings tied into perfect bows. There was no competition, no drive to beat Candy, she was dying after all, there was only sheer admiration, intrigue, and awareness. If Candy can write a book and she is dying, can I also write a book? Am I allowed to write a book? I can make a three-hole punched construction paper book cover. I can do that too. I have things to say.

The great Candy, inventor of disease, writer of books, sweetest, cloggingist girl in elementary school had a hard life. Harder than any of us knew or understood. Looking back now my loneliness was physical, hers was something else. She was lonely, more lonely than any of us knew. So lonely she invented a disease to get attention.

Who knows what happened? Maybe she just got lost in the middle, the middle of her brother and sister, the middle of her mom and dad’s life, while they struggled to make ends meet, tried not to get a divorce, prayed not to lose a job, or whatever else they were going through.

Years later, I ran into her. She was strung out and desperate. My heart ached when I recognized the hint of that sweet face lingering behind a new face. A face, that while we were still young, was older and harder. She talked to me fast and desperate in words I could not understand from a lonely story she never escaped.