The worst beach-going experience of my life happened in July of 1985 on a beautiful, humiliating afternoon.
I was five, the family was vacationing on Cape Cod, and I was experiencing the ocean for the first time in my life. As a small child terrified of almost everything, waves were a new unholy terror in my life; but like so many for whom there was nothing of particular interest on shore, I felt an inexplicable call of the ocean. I kept wandering down to the edge of the waves, then scurrying back up the beach, over and over.
Some other bigger, braver kid advised me to wade in a
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