I'm not what you would call a beach person. It's been almost ten years since I've spent a week down the Jersey shore, five years since I went on a vacation near any beach, and two years since I spent so much as a day within view of a shoreline. I'm Ezra Klein's worst nightmare: someone who gets a decent amount of vacation each year but never bothers to take any of it.
The other night, though, I spent a lot of time gobbling up information about my old familial shore destination of Wildwood Crest on Google Maps and Wikipedia. I'm not entirely sure what brought this on; earlier that evening, I had been reading up on the Korean Demilitarized Zone, and anyone who can find a connection between those two locations deserves some sort of prize. Among the things I learned: children's author and illustrator Aliki was born there, the two islands in Sunset Lake that I always wanted to visit have actual names (Shaw Island and Ephraim Island), and the concrete ship wrecked off of Cape May Point is slowly eroding and one day will cease to exist.
I hate to be nostalgic, but for a few hours I couldn't help but be reminded of when I was young and staring eagerly out of the car windows, counting down the landmarks that told me we were getting closer to the shore, a place that seemed so exotic that I assumed the people there spoke a different language.
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