How do I start this other than by explaining that I’m a Cali kid? I grew up going to Dodger games, where bacon-wrapped hot dogs with the works--peppers, onions, white and red condiments--mixed up in my open mouth yelling, “Yeah, yeah that’s it!” in the midst of a sea of blue baseball caps. My childhood was framed by shady palm trees, In-N-Outs every few miles, and shivering in 70-degree winters. I didn’t see snow for the first time until I was 18. I was experienced at ducking and covering for an earthquake. Holiday and summer months consisted visiting Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, Legoland, and Six Flags. Southern California to me, was the most beautiful, happiest, warm, and welcoming place in the world.

Most importantly was my love for the water. My family called me "The Little Mermaid" for my penchant for swimming and constant attraction to the ocean. In high school, I'd join the swim team, even though I wasn't very good at it. My summers consisted of alternating between getting in trouble and hanging out in my pool. My favorite place in the world will always be the beach.

When I was in high school, Ditch Day was guaranteed to be at Newport Beach. But, if you were one of those Abercrombie/Hollister kids, your friends would celebrate instead at Huntington, which was a few miles further down the Pacific Coast Highway. The one friend who always managed to have a car would have their trunk filled with food and surfboards, while their seats were packed with bodies.

When vehicles were being passed out at Sweet Sixteen’s or Quinceañera’s, the recipients had to solemnly swear to their parents that they would drive safely in order to have the coveted keys handed over. Their promise didn’t seem to apply when we were ditching school. What did it matter if everyone was sitting on someone else’s lap and the seatbelt didn’t wrap around the both of you?

Depending on how wild or desperate we were to bring everybody, friends would sit on the car floor in between the front seat and the back. When a cop drove by, a blanket was thrown over them, their head shoved down and body pushed to the bottom of the car. Any vehicle could be turned into a clown car, even my best friend’s mother’s old SUV. If there were seven open seats, fifteen people would fit. The idea was quantity of individuals over quality of comfort.

If a car wasn’t available--and many times, they weren’t--we’d catch the metro train to San Diego or San Clemente at 7:04 am, swim all day next to surfboards and listen to the Beach Boys blaring from speakers set alongside the beach. As the day would settle, we’d roll all our shit up in a towel and shove it back in our now-wet backpacks, to catch the train heading back to Riverside at 8:16 pm. By that time, our hair would be dried out, our skin red, itchy, and sunburnt, and there would be sand in our bathing suit bottoms and in our ass cracks. Even though we gorged on potato chips and deli meat sandwiches all day, we would be hungry and ready for bed. These were the best days of my life.

My friends and I weren’t city kids. Our hometown, Rubidoux, was the kind of place where everybody either drove or walked. Buses didn’t make sense and riding the train was only heard about in cities like Los Angeles or New York. I walked to everyone’s house and would give their mothers the puppy eyes to drive me back home. But if you wanted to go south towards San Diego and couldn’t cough up the thirty bucks for gas money, the train was the only way to go.

One time, I went with two friends and we spent the ride staring out the window. We were fifteen and sixteen, with choppy colored hair and various holes in our face. We thought we were badasses. Besides the young guys behind us, we were the only ones in the train car. Our voices were loud and full of laughter. The shaggy-headed surfers started to mimic and mock our voices. I turned around and told them to shut up with my most menacing glare. I wasn’t afraid to fight them, even though they were older and I wasn't as tough as I liked to believe I was. They shook their heads at us and went to the other side of the train car. When they took their seats, I called out to them. When they looked my way, I quickly pulled my shorts down and mooned them. The surfers screamed at each other and scrambled into another train car. My girlfriends and I collapsed into laughter on the seats. Later we would see them again on the San Clemente pier, where they would pull their trunks down to show a pair of white cheeks, in front of all the families and couples that were walking by us.

Six weeks later, we arranged a bigger crew of girls to go, which unfortunately meant a larger margin for error. It was 7 am and we were on the platform, still buying our tickets to San Diego when the train pulled up. The next one wouldn’t be coming for an hour, so I rushed into the car, only for the doors to close behind me. The rest of the girls were still outside. Only two of us had a cell phone and it definitely wasn’t me. I started banging on the door as alarmed passengers stared at me. One of the girls just grabbed onto the rails on the side of the train, with her feet almost dangling over the foothold. I stared at her in shock. Would she really be able to hang onto the rails for the two hundred miles it took to get to San Diego? The others crowded behind her, ticket stubs in hand, as they yelled and pounded on the glass door. Eventually, the conductor opened the train door and let my friends on, but not after yelling at us that we made the train and the people inside of it late. She said we could’ve been fined and should’ve been kicked off. An hour later, when we ended up in Fullerton, we realized we were on the wrong train altogether.

Even when the adventure wasn't fun, I've been able to look back and find the humor in it. For one of my best friend's 18th birthday, a group of us went to Venice beach.The guys had been drinking a mix of vodka and Kool-Aid in the back seat, so by the time we made it to the ocean, they were already wasted and ready to cause mischief. One of the guys disappeared and we heard a scream about a hundred feet away. Our friend was jokingly trying to pull a purse out of a woman's hand. As we rushed towards them, we watched the woman’s son come up and whack our friend on the side of the head with his skateboard. Drunk and rapidly losing consciousness, my pal took off. We tried to get to him before the cops did. By the time we caught up to him, he was being put into the back of an ambulance by an EMT. We were given the address of a hospital an hour away to pick him up. He ended up having to stay overnight, and we had to call his mom to tell her what happened. He would only have a few stitches for a wound that spurting out blood only hours before, but I learned to keep a better eye on my drunk friends after that.

I never cared what we had to do to get there, all that mattered to me was that I went. I went swimming at 2 am in February once--just jumped in the freezing water and shivered for hours after that. I'd disappear from school starting around the end of March to get in as many beach days for the year that I could. Once I had my own car, I'd find myself driving with my friends at all hours to the water. We would occasionally get in trouble for our antics, but that wasn't the reason why I was so eager to go. If I was sad, depressed, or frustrated, just diving in would make me feel better. It wasn't important how I looked or what was going on. What I needed was to be in the big wave and feel the world turn, to feel the sand under my toes and the salt in my mouth. It was like the only place that I could let myself feel and confront things that bothered me was in the ocean. I'd stay out there for hours, ignoring sunburn or growing hunger. I could feel my bad feelings in there and then watch the waves take them away, bringing me back to peace. The water is the only place I feel really free.