This was the huge Salt Water pool that was just down the street.  It had a huge diving board that I would look at and think to myself......someday.  It was where my dad would endlessly teach us how to swim.  It was expensive, we as a family never had a locker.  Through the years the only beach time we had was waiting for my father to come home on a nice day.  We would go to Pier beach which was the beach closest to Sea Girt.  Mostly, it was my brother and I and that is when I learned how to ride the waves and I would dive under the waves like a dolphin.  He would say that a lot and I loved it because my favorite television show at the time was Flipper.  I faced all of my fears back then and eventually jumped off the large diving board before they took it down for safety reasons.  We also would do a lot of shell seeking with my dad.  We  looked for Cape May diamonds and shark's teeth.  Later, when Glen and I lived in Manasquan we loved to look for sea glass or mermaid tears.  When I got older in the fifth grade I told my mom I wanted a locker in the worst way.  She thought we would not get enough use out of it.  Her answer to me was go see if your friends will let you share a locker with them.  Well, they did and my mom paid the thirty five dollars for the badge.  The next year she said for me to pay.  And so I started babysitting and saved my money to buy a badge.  This is when I learned a very important lesson.....anything in life I would ever want I would have to work for.  Some of the best times I had at the beach were with different people.  One friend had a bunch of little brothers and the three littlest would go everywhere with us.  We would make a lunch get to the beach at 8am and drag our butts home at 5pm.  Then there were the high school days where I worked in the local hotels as a chamber maid, and the rest of the day was spent at the beach.  And then my favorites were when I could drive to the beach in Manasquan and finally buy a beach chair.  We would sit until the last possible minute and have it down to a science of when to leave the beach to get to work in time.