The Beach
I have always lived near a beach. I was born in Southern California, and one of my earliest memories is of digging my fingers into warm, wet sand. Even before I could walk, my mother would sit me at the water''s edge and I''d laugh with delight as the foamy surf swirled in around my chubby legs. In our grammar school days, my sisters and I would spend our summers at the beach, taking turns burying each other in the sand up to our chins. We collected only one kind of shell--a tiny, pointed one that looked like a miniature unicorn horn. But mostly we played in the water, jumping high into the cresting waves and shrieking happily, or sitting in the shallows and letting the waves knock us down like bowling pins, squealing at the raspy rush of sand in our swimsuits and salt water up our nose. Then I was in high school, and the beach was where the gorgeous, sun-bleached surfers rode the waves and roamed the shore from daybreak to dusk. Now I never entered the water (I looked horrible with wet hair!); I spent the day lying on an oversized beach towel, layered with suntan oil and baking in the sun, turning over every fifteen minutes and watching the guys out of the corners of my eyes. I met a few nice ones, chased away a lot of creeps
Though I have always loved the beach, it has not always loved me back. I recall vividly the horrid, gritty crunch of the mouthful of sand I took when, as a baby, I just had to find out what the stuff tasted like. I still taste the burning draughts of salt water I gulped the time I toppled over at the edge of the surf just as my mother turned her back for a moment. I haven''t forgotten how hard it was to rid my hair of sand, or the maddening irritation of it in my suit bottom, or the awful stinging cuts I got on my knees and elbows from being tumbled in a rugged surf. I cannot forget the huge beach bag I began toting to the beach when I was in high school--bulging with towels, portable radio, magazines, bottles of oil, book, sunglasses, and cosmetics case--and which seemed to weigh even twice as much on the way back to the car. By late afternoon the sand was blistering hot, my face and shoulders were burned raw, and my head pounded with every heartbeat. At the beach I usually went to, you had to go up two flights of stairs to reach the parking lot, and the climb always left me at the end of my endurance, parched and panting. And yet, despite my complaints, there''s still nothing lovelier than a sunrise seen from the beach, or a full
Some common words found in the essay are:
Prince Sun, Southern California, Miami Beach, , salt water,
Approximate Word count = 837
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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