I can do all these except maybe get out of the pool.
The only thing is I have real hard time going underwater without plugging my nose. I’m working on it.
I was swimming at about age 4 or 5. My parents tied a rope around me and threw me into a fast moving river (OK that’s not true). But I know I was swimming then because I can date my earliest experience to a city pool dug out next to a reservoir. It was more pond than pool. If I remember correctly the walls were staked telephone poles and the bottom was cement. They cleaned it by flushing it and refilling it from the reservoir. But it had a diving deck and I spent a lot of time diving so I had the basics down. When we moved I had a couple of years of swimming instruction at a local Y up through 1st and 2nd grade. It was good enough to get me out of trouble as a teenager swimming in the ocean. That was a bit scary.
That’s what Mr.Wrek tells his boating riders.
He a fisherman, not a swimmer. He can swim. He just doesn’t care too.
He’s been in the drink a number of times. Due to, well, stupid decision making.
Bending too far over. Falling because of faulty knee or gout. Sinking his boat.
You takes yer chances out with him. Wear your vest. And hold on.
What do you think?
I drink, too.
And I’m going out like Captain Pomin.
Here…fishy fishy fishy!
Like an otter. It’s the only athletic type activity I’ve ever been good at.
I absolutely agree!
When I was in college, we all had to pass a swim test (which I did). Kids who did not, I believe, had to take swimming as one of their two PE elective courses to graduate. Public schools (elementary / high school) did not routinely have any kind of swim facilities, not that I ever heard of. Maybe in some areas they did.
Same here. I doubt I could exit a pool in deep water anywhere. When I was growing up, I certainly could, but part of that was the design of the pool - a shallow edge, then a gutter, then the regular edge - gave us more to grab onto.
I CAN swim underwater w/o plugging my nose; I remember being bemused by seeing other swimmers using a nose clip. I can also do breathing function tests (spirometry) without a clip on my nose; someone tried to put one on me, once, and I said I didn’t need it. I let them use one once, and it hurt like hell.
I grew up in Louisiana; knowing how to swim was considered Very Important. My aunt gave swimming lessons for kids starting at age 3 or 4, and I was duly enrolled in them. I don’t believe I even knew anyone who didn’t know how to swim, and I still think that everyone who is physically capable of swimming should learn to do so as early as possible.
I’m not particularly fast or graceful in the water, but I have swum under all sorts of conditions–lakes, fast-moving rivers, shallow reefs. I’ve even had occasion to swim across a couple hundred yards of a bay, towing an overturned canoe behind me to the beach.
Being, shall we say, extravagantly buoyant does occasionally confer some small advantage. 
I don’t have a brother, but I did have older cousins. I don’t recall where they were at the time…
In the summer of '89 my parents took me to Mississippi to visit some family friends. These folks lived right on the gulf, there was a pier at the end of the street everyone shared, so I just assumed all the kids could swim. We went for a swim in the nearby Jourdan River and us kids decided it’d be fun to swim across it. My sister and I were doing fine, but about halfway across I noticed the other kids were struggling to keep their heads above water and realized they didn’t know how to swim.
I ended up having to help the youngest on our way back to shore which meant I spent more time under water than I wanted to be. Which I was a decent swimmer, I had no lifeguard training and had we been farther from the shore we both would have gone under. I was absolutely livid and verbally ripped into all three of them asking why they agreed to swim across the river when they didn’t know how to swim? Their mother told me it was no big deal because you could float forever and I shouted back, “Yeah, doing the dead man’s float.” That was the last time we visited them.
I was shocked to learn that peopel who lived so close to the coast, people who regularly went into the ocean, didn’t know how to swim. It blew my tiny little mind.
Same. Well, I can ride a bicycle, and am a medium-level competent rider of horses. And I can hike. Don’t ask me to do anything involving a ball.
I saw an interesting fact on the news this morning (27 May 2024) that about one Quebec child per day is taken to ER for drowning or near-drowning:
I’ve been able to swim since I was 8 or 9. I was taught at summer camp and the transition from couldn’t float to could float was very sudden. I remember it quite clearly.
Heh, I knew a Québécois woman and I can believe it.
(obligatory) “Someone should keep a closer eye on that kid!” (/o)
Regarding kids and drowning, Steven Levitt’'s Freakonomics memorably summarizes the dangers of not being able to swim. He’s anti-gun, but points out that parents underestimate the dangers of pools/
Op-ed piece on swimming pools vs. guns as the most dangerous weapon | ScienceBlogs
And I’ve been able to swim since my father taught me as a young child; I became a strong swimmer in high school and do laps when I have the chance. My own kids learned young too.
I can do the first four of these without any trouble, but getting out of a pool without a ladder might be tricky. It takes a fair amount of upper body strength to get your torso up to water level, and then you have to get a foot on the ground which requires some flexibility. Upon reflection, i could do it, but it would not be pretty.
And rates are really high for autistic kids. Most kids who drown in pools are autistic. Hence me wanting my son to learn. But it is coming slowly for him.
A lot depends on the pool. In soom pools the water comes right up to ground level, and I wouldn’t have any trouble exiting those. Other, pools the grond is up to abut 18" above the water level and i really would struggle to get out of those without a ladder.
Yes, I can swim!
I was born, raised and still live in Minnesota the Land of 10,000 Lakes (actually there’s more than that) not to mention Lake Superior is 15 minutes away. We had a cabin on a lake that we spent every weekend at during the summer. So I was in the water from the time I was a baby.
Most of us in Minnesota think it’s odd if you can’t swim and/or ice skate!
I have taken beginning swimming lessons multiple times but unfortuantly i still cant swim.