I’d never been to a Texas beach before last week.

Myself and 12 other Optimist staff and advisers went to the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association conference in Corpus Christi for a few days. At the convention we participated in on-site competitions as well as listened to lectures (well, some of us did anyway) and accepted seemingly thousands of awards at the awards breakfast on Saturday morning.

But the beach offered a distraction for many. Not me.

You may recall from previous columns my background is predominantly Florida-based. That’s where the real beaches are.

I hadn’t heard great things about Texas beaches but I figured surely a beach couldn’t be too bad, could it? Well, it could, and don’t call me Shirley.

The thin stretch of dull, dense sand lying between hotel and green seawater was the lone divider separating our rented Suburban and minivan and the rotting trash accumulating in different areas of the water and sand. Just some of the trash consisted of a laundry detergent bottle, many indistinguishable objects and several beer cans.

You stay classy, Texas beaches.

I miss Florida.

I didn’t live near Miami or even the Atlantic Ocean. I lived in Tallahassee, near where the panhandle meets the peninsula. A common shopping destination for country folk and an hour from the Gulf of Mexico, it isn’t the typical Florida city you Texans probably think of.

But even the gulf beaches were way better than Corpus Christi.

That’s what surprised me when I saw the disappointingly dirty and very green water; it’s the same body of water I went to in Florida, why was it not of similar quality?

Isn’t Galveston supposed to be even worse?

Basically, I’m saying Florida’s better than Texas.

I’m joking. I would never disrespect the Texas flag. Eh, I might. Texans are the proudest people I’ve ever met when their state is mentioned.

Many times y’all have told me, “We could secede and be our own country if we wanted to.” Is that so? Go for it. See how that works out for you.

This got off-track fast. That wasn’t my point. My point was Texas beaches are worse than Florida’s.

Okay, maybe that was my point.

Also, TIPA was great, thanks for asking. I won first place in radio sports writing for a story on a small-school softball game. As exciting as that sounds, I also got to sit on bleachers for three hours without shade in 90 degree weather. Separate from the softball game, I won a scholarship for my work as a collegiate journalist.

So yes, despite the disappointment of the beach, Corpus was fun and a good learning experience. Did y’all know calamari is squid?