Comparisons  

FROM WHERE I SIT,
you can see the dunes, hear the surf
and smell the greasepaint on the pale faces of summer.
But this is not the coast, or the ocean or the beach.

This is somewhere altogether different.
This is The Shore.

If you grew up in Oregon,
the ultimate Coppertone-Free Zone,
those words won't mean very much.
But if you got your start around Baltimore or Philly,
if your spring breaks took you to Lauderdale or Myrtle Beach,
if you can still hear beach music
on the jukebox of your college years,
surely "The Shore" takes you back.

Back to the saltwater taffy and the boogie boards
and the hours you spent mining for sand crabs at the water's edge.
Back under the boardwalk and up onto the lifeguard stand.

New Jersey's share of The Shore takes an entirely different approach
to the meeting of land and sea than the Oregon coast.
Beaches in the Pacific Northwest are forbidding and proud of it.
The water is cold, the rocks and tidal pools are slippery,
and the logs can be as treacherous as the undertows.

 They couldn't be further from The Shore.

At first glance, from the soft-serve stands on the boardwalk
or the white-hot coals of the dunes,
the throng on the beach at Ocean City is so thick
you expect Moses to step out of the teeming horde and order the sea to part.

But when you settle in among the plastic buckets and beach umbrellas,
the mob begins to break down into high school friends,
disheveled families from Annapolis or Asbury Park,
and unemployed Major League umpires wallowing at the water's edge.

And over the course of a day at the beach,
much less a week at The Shore,
the experience goes a long way toward helping you
make peace with the mad variety of human imperfection.

You arrive overdressed because you're expecting
the Victoria's Secret set or the Sports Illustrated swimsuit sorority
or Michelangelo's David in a Speedo.
You're in no hurry to disrobe.
You've been conditioned by vanity, or Vanity Fair,
to believe everyone is waifer thin,
vacuously arrayed and magnificently lit.

But you come to find, in rather short order,
that the perfect fit of the human body and a bathing suit
is rarer than peanut butter on a jellyfish.

Hourglass figures and Tarzanesque torsos may exist,
but they are anomalies at The Shore.
Stripped down to trunks or bikini briefs,
everyone is an anomaly, a variation, a pound or 10 out of sorts.
And no one looks particularly good in fishnet.

Far from depressing, this revelation is liberating.
Pride, after all, is the only thing standing between you and a tan,
and this, it seems, is common knowledge:
Witness the flip-flop,
living proof we will sacrifice dignity for utility.

Whatever illusions you drag down to the high-tide line,
you soon release them.
You stake your claim to a piece of the beach
and get on with the real business of The Shore:
reading wretched books, drinking warm Cokes
and warning your youngest that the sand crab won't melt in her mouth.

Finding simple pleasure in the sudden rise of a wave
or the long-overdue ding-a-ling of the Good Humor man.

It's a long way from Driftwood Beach and the Devil's Punchbowl.
The experience gets less treacherous as the week goes on.

And when each day is done,
you rise somewhat darker of skin and lighter of heart.
You realize in the ebbing heat of late afternoon
that you are no longer judging the passing parade of misshaped souls.
You are no longer keeping an eye out for Charles Atlas or Lady Godiva.

If everyone looks imperfect, everyone looks increasingly unique.

Maybe it's the salt in the air.
The lights of the Ferris wheel in the distance.

The peace of The Shore.