Shocking but true. Back in the 60s my mother took me swimming to a public beach at a lake on a hot summer day. A man, reading his newspaper on his lakeside porch, got up and went inside. Mom heard the toilet flush, and shortly thereafter a t**d floated by. She got me out of there right away, and we didn't go swim in that lake again. It was later mandated that all the old summer houses henceforth must install septic tanks and not flow their waste into the lake anymore.

I discovered a beautiful beach about a twenty minute walk from my hotel, while working in Hiraska, Japan. So the next time I worked there, I brought my swimming suit, got up early before work, and headed for the beach.
When I got there, I saw three people giving artificial resuscitation to someone lying on the beach. Then I looked out to the ocean and saw people in wet suits bringing more bodies to the shore on their surfboards, and pulling them up onto the beach. Maybe a boat had capsized? This sure wasn’t a good day to go for a swim!
Then suddenly, all the dead people got up and swam out into ocean! Turns out it was a group of lifeguards practicing their rescue techniques.

A large family of 3 generations Grandparents parents and children had enjoyed a day on a beautiful beach in Devon. By late afternoon they had accumulated several piles of litter. The grandparents got up and started of down the beach joined by the grandchildren, several minutes later the 4 adults got up shook their beach towels and began to follow. I wasn’t the only one watching and several locals approached and asked if the family were leaving. They were and obviously had no qualms about the mess they were intending to leave. There were a few raised voices and the visitors were supplied with rubbish sacks made to clean up and told that if they intended to visit the beach again, clearing up was expected. I thought it was disgusting that people could visit such a beautiful location and leave it in such a mess

Shocking, but not in a bad way. I’d been living in South Carolina for some time, frequenting a particular beach almost daily with my friend who’d lived there quite longer than I had. We both knew full well that this was a “no public drinking” beach. We did drink on the beach but kept it fairly discreet. We’re out there one day, and we’ve slipped a bit, we have a couple of beer cans showing. Friend has fallen dead asleep. We’re not actually drunk, but friend always falls asleep sunbathing. I’m laying out, not really fully awake but not totally asleep either. I hear the police coming in their quad. I decide to let my friend sleep through this, police make said friend very nervous. I sit up as I hear the quad stop near us, I already know what this is about. I’m willing to take the ticket with minimal drama. The officer asks me for ID, it still happens to be my AZ ID. The officer assumes I’m a tourist, and asks if my friend is here from AZ too, or a local. So I fish out my friend’s ID, still also an AZ ID. I point out my car, AZ plates. I still think I’ll get a ticket. No, this kind and reasonable officer says we must not have noticed the signs, but this is a no alcohol beach. He doesn’t expect us to read every sign or to know this. He takes our empty beer cans. But wait, it gets better. He explains that the law was made because college students would come to the beach and get drunk and unruly, not for sleepy middle aged tourists such as us. He hands me a couple of red solo cups. He proceeds to tell me that if we simply pour our beer into these, no one will ask what’s in the cup, and no one will look in our cooler unless we foolishly left it open. So I shockingly got the inside scoop on how to get away with breaking the law on the beach, by a cop whose main purpose was to enforce said law.

I saw a lifeguard jump into the ocean pull out a young girl who was motionless. She proceeded to give the young girl CPR: after 45 seconds, maybe a minute the young girl started to respond. The ambulance took the child away, the lifeguard went right back to her post like nothing ever happened. It was amazing the lifeguard had nerves of steel it takes a lot to impress me and she floored me: a true hero.

I once saw some men protesting about overweight and/or elderly women sunbathing naked. Whilst, as a man, I appreciate the beauty of the female body, I do not regard fellow sun bathers to be there for my enjoyment or titillation. I felt that the protesting men seemed to think that women were there for te enjoyment of stupid men and not for the women’s pleasure. It made me very angry.

Politics.