I grew up in California about 30 miles from the beach.

One of my first memories of the beach is when I was four or five years old. After
spreading out our towels, setting up the picnic, and establishing base camp, I promised
my parents that I would be careful as I ran down to the water to play. I played the "don't
get caught by the wave" game. This is where you get as close to the water as possible;
then, when a wave comes in, you run away to avoid getting wet. Then, as the water
retreats back into the ocean, you follow it as closely as possible without getting wet.
Then the next wave comes in, and you do the same thing. Up and down, down and up.
Over and over again. Some other kids joined in the fun, and at one point one of them
threw a ball into the water. We focused on it as it went up and back with the waves. I
was enjoying myself and having lots of fun. I played for a long time before getting tired
and noticing that my friends had all disappeared, so I decided to take a break.
I ran up to where my family was, but the towels, the picnic, and my family were gone. I
ran through all the many people, looking for my family, but they were nowhere to be
seen. I was confused.
Then I started to cry. I cried as I walked and ran aimlessly through the crowd in random
directions.
A kind lady, a stranger, lifted me into her arms and began to comfort me. I, being an
astute child, recognized that she was a stranger, and so I cried louder. But she was kind
and gentle. She said not to worry and that we would find my parents, and then she
started to walk up the beach in the wrong direction.
It was a fact that I was lost, but I knew she was even more lost. I kicked her and tried to
get away, but she held me tight and continued to walk and talk softly for several
minutes. Then, suddenly, I saw my dad walking quickly towards us.
The hand off was made, and my rescuer disappeared. I started to think, "Wow, she was
really nice," and I wondered how she knew which way to walk. I was glad I hadn't
succeeded in kicking her away. My dad took me back to our towels and family, and I
was saved.
At the time, I felt it very important that I not be responsible for getting lost. I blamed my
parents for not watching me close enough; I blamed my new friends for leaving me; I
blamed the ball that kept me hyper occupied; I blamed the crowds on the beach; in the
end, I blamed the whole beach. I didn't know the word at the time, but I made myself
into a victim.
My dad taught me, however, that it was my responsibility to look up often to make sure I
knew where our towels and family were. He promised that if I did that, I would not get
lost again.
I played all the rest of the day, but I made sure to look up often and, as a result, never
got lost again.
While studying geology in college, I learned that what I had experienced is called
longshore drift. This is where waves hit the beach at an angle and wash up as far as
they can go; then the water returns to the sea by the shortest possible route, which is
straight downhill, not back along the same angle it came up in. The net effect of this
continuous motion is to move the sand in a series of arcs along the beach face.
For example, it's estimated that one million cubic yards of sand per year are moved
southward across the beach at Santa Monica, California (Charles C. Plummer, Physical
Geology, Eighth Edition, 343).
I was like a piece of sand. By following the waves up at an angle, then straight down,
over and over again, I had made my way down the beach quite a distance without even
knowing it. I thought I was just going up and down in the same spot, but I wasn't. I was
unintentionally drifting, and in that process I got lost. My family hadn't moved; I had. My
family wasn't lost; I was. I hadn't intended to get lost, but I did.