When I was 12, I went to sea. I went to sea to see the sea. I had yet to see the sea until I was 12. Then the sea I saw, and the sea, she saw me.
We hated each other.
I had romanticized the sea, reading stories and poetry and all the great paintings of roiling waves and citrus sunsets, and salty captains and scruffy sea dogs. It got so I could smell the sea without having smelled the sea. And I couldn't wait to see the sea. So I went.
The sea, she was not pleasant that day. The color of school bus seats, the smell of a busted fridge. She did not care for visitors. She was fussy.
But I was too excited, and I could not wait. I had to go to sea. But the sea, she disappointed me. She smacked me and pouted, and I left bereft of sea love.
A writer, reader, swashbuckler, former counter-spy, soda jerk, space cowboy, and honorary Professor of Not-Quite-Mad-But-Pretty-Unusual Sciences at the University of Genial Monsters (Go Smilin' Sasquatch!), Mark J. Hansen has secretly saved the universe numerous times, with more close calls than he cares to admit. He enjoys fast trips through time and space, arm-wrestling rainbows, eccentric headwear and kittens with British accents. When he is not sharing his Stories of the Amazing and the Amazingly Well-Written, he mostly hangs out in his hot-air balloon overlooking Skull Island with a root beer float and a parrot on each shoulder, practicing hypnotism and innovative shoe-tying techniques.