My family (and I mean my extended family) vacations in Maine every year. I was born in November, they go in August, so I guess I was…9 months old. I, too, cannot imagine never seeing it. Even though I never lived clsoe to one (lived in northern VT) I still saw it every year. Actually, 2004 was the first year I never saw the ocean.
Although it has just been the once ocean, (Atlantic, for those realyl bad at geography,) but at several locations. I have been mainly in Maine, but also a little south in NH, and a lot more suth in FL, at Miami Beach and the Gulf of Mexico. I have also been at the other end of the Pond, though just in the Medditeranean.
I do feel bad for those on the west coast, cause they don’t get the sunrise on the ocean. Yes, I know they have a sunset, but seeing the sun come up on a huge body of water is so much cooler than seeing it go down, IMO.
SC the real Atlantic? I don’t know how cold it is there, but real Atlantic is New England Atlantic! The kind of Atlantic that sends ships to their watery graves! That is fifty degrees in the summer, and you still swim in it!
I was a Navy brat. So, the ocean has always been around. I miss it right now because I have been living away from it now for about 8 years or so. Where I live right now though you only have to drive about an hour or less to see it so it’s all good.
Same here, only Lake Superior. Seeing the ocean for the first time wasn’t a big deal for me, as I’d been going to the beach and playing in the water from the time I was an infant.
The first time I saw the ocean, I’d flown down from Toronto to Florida with my family (I was much younger) and it was nighttime. I was sleepy, and I don’t remember much else except the sound of the waves on the shore.
The next morning I woke up early, I went and stood on the balcony; it was clear and the sun was rising over the sea. It was so beautiful… I was in complete awe.
I was 24. My husband and I went to Florida three years ago so he could show me where he grew up. We spent a couple of afternoons on the beach. It was nice. If I had to choose which to live by, an ocean or a lake, I’d choose the lake. What can I say? I’m a product of my environment.
It is part of the family mythology. When I was about 3, my parents drove from Ohio to Miami. On to Miami and straight to the beach where I stood for a moment then stated, “Wow. What a big bathtub.”
I saw it first when I was about 3 years old. We only lived about a 4 hour drive from the nearest beach, so it was common to go in the summer time.
My maternal grandmother, however, never visited the ocean in her entire life. She lived to be 76 and we tried to talk her into going many times. She would have none of it.
Back when I was single and living in the Midwest, I’d often peruse the lonely hearts ads. Many of the women seemed interesting, but there was always this line “Likes: long walks on the beach.”
“Long walks on the beach.” What the hell did that mean? I’d already invested too much of my life in failed relationships, and was leery of any possible incompatabilities, so I got a rent-a-wreck and drove it 800 miles to the nearest ocean.
The air was fresh and everything, but walking in town as opposed to the beach was more attractive: no store windows or creative posters for bands or plywood knotholes at building sights. It was probably the wrong time of the year: at least the dogshit factor was lower, but otherwise all I got was an earache. And what with all that “Likes: long walks on the beach,” I’d assumed I might have enountered a few available women doing what they like to do, but all I saw was some kids grubbing inthe sand and a shoving match between a couple of old guys with metal detectors. Either the women were bullshitting, or they’re afraid to walk on the beach alone for fear of getting hit with a metal detector.
I was in Wilmington, NC this summer when me and my friends met up with 3 marines and we agreed to go hang at the beach. It was late by the time we got there, nearly 3am, and the girls and guys paired off.
I wandered off with Dave from Ohio and we walked probably a mile down the beach, splashing in up to our knees and hunting for pretty shells. We were barefoot, the sand was so soft, and the salt air smelled so good. He told me all about his recent service in Iraq and I told him about Americorps. We climbed up into a lifeguard lookout tower to watch the sunrise over the ocean. Dave reached out and stroked my long hair as the night bled into dawn.
Talk about a long walk on the beach. I hope Dave from Ohio enjoyed it as much as I did.
I was born about a half hour drive from the beach. Since, at the time, going to the beach was just about the cheapest entertainment available, and my family had very little in the way of monetary resources, we spent a good deal of time there. There are pictures of me at the beach when I was less than 2 months old. Since I have no true memory of the first time I saw the ocean, I will relate this anecdote, which is quite possibly my earliest memory of the beach:
When I was about 4 (1972 or so), the beach we usually went to (Venice Beach in California) went from allowing nudity to prohibiting it. However, my parents told me I could still be naked, since the prohibition against being naked at this beach applied to people 10 and older, or something. So, when we got to the beach I, as was my normal procedure, stripped naked and ran down to the water as naked as the day I was born. When I arrived at the edge of the edge of the surf, however, several older children wearing bathing suits immediately pointed at me and laughed and jeered. I looked around quickly and noted that I was the only naked person in view along the entire beach. With a deep feeling of unmeasurabe shame burning in my face, I streaked back to where my parents were.
I still have a hard time getting naked in front of strangers (in the gym locker room, for instance).
My most profound moment in the ocean!!!
When I was in high school Dad bought a Thompson commercial fishing boat. He liked to go deep-sea fishing and could not justify a sport fisher. When I was sixteen, I went out for my first trip of many. I was awed at the fact that it was possible to go 50 or 60 miles off of the coast of South Carolina and not see another boat or plane the entire time that you were out there. You could turn off the sideband and it was not hard to believe that there was no one else in the world. It is a big ocean. When boats disappear without a trace, I am never surprised. A few years after Dad’s boat was sold, it went to sea and was lost with all hands.
Though later in life Laura lived in Florida (I don’t remember if she was on the coast) and she also visited her daughter in San Francisco.
Being a Midwesterner myself, I didn’t see the ocean until my freshman year of college (though I had seen Lakes Michigan and Huron). I went out to visit an uncle of mine who lived in Oregon. I remember he was nice enough to stop on the shoulder of the highway when we first glimpsed it so I could look at it. When we got to a beach, the first thing I did was taste the water to prove to myself that it really was salty.
I was born in San Diego so I’m sure I saw the ocean pretty early. But we moved to the mid-west, so I don’t really remember seeing the ocean 'til I was in my early teens. When I first went swimming in it, I remember being kinda freaked out because I realized I was in the same bathtub with things that were way bigger than me, and some of them could easily eat me. I got over that, though.
