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| ocean.nationalgeographic.com |
The sea and I have had a difficult relationship through the
years.
Admittedly,
I haven’t lost any husbands or children to Davey Jones’ locker, nor have I ever
been forced to explore my own mortality while face-to-face with the sea’s immense
power and might.
So I’ve
got that going for me.
No, the
source of my problems with the seas is that it’s kinda gross. Jellyfish live in
it, they’re gross. Seaweed is of course known to reside in and near the sea,
you can tell that from the name.
But the
grossest part of all is the salt.
When I was
a kid, this inherent ickiness never bothered me. I’d spend hours in the sea,
frolicking about. My favorite passion was pretending my boogie board was a space
ship from “Star Wars.” Good times.
I’m not
sure what exactly caused it, but at a point though, the sea and I turned on each
other.
The
thought of going in, getting coated in salt water from head to toe and then
having to sit on the beach for several more hours before I could shower it off
began to seem like something Jack Bauer should be dishing out to terrorist
kingpins.
There
was also the issue of putting on sun tan lotion. If I didn’t smear half a kilo
of the stuff on my person, the sun would cook my Irish skin like an overwhelmed
chef on “Hell’s Kitchen.” But that greasy feeling of sun tan lotion also didn’t
sit well with me. Especially if you put it on your chest and back and then put
a shirt on top of it.
This
was the worst. So gross. Much awfulness.
Given my
scrawny and, as we already discussed, ghostly-white physique, shirtless wasn’t
an option.
