Fade to Quiet

This is my beach. Siesta Beach. On Siesta Key, on the Gulf Coast. This is my beach. It has white sand I walked on every day when I was a teenager. This is the beach that saved my life, kept me off drugs, the beach that was my boyfriend for all those years I didn't have one. This is the beach my grandmother and I walked along in winter, imagining the white sand into snow. It's the beach I kicked soccer balls on while walking its miles with my best friend. It's the beach where I lost the key to my father's Audi while my parents went to England on vacation, before I had a license to drive. It's the beach that mysteriously coughed up the key so I could drive home, astonished. For how many years have we been using the phrase "of mythical proportions?" The oil in the Gulf of Mexico has reached "mythical proportions." They are now saying that since the underwater robot (what planet are we on?) bumped into the cap (the one we actually watched that 24 hou...