Ever take your family to the beach, lake or pool? Did you keep a sharp eye out to make sure everyone was safe? After reading this article on what drowning is really like, I shudder to think how useless I would have been if any of my family had actually been drowning. Everything I’ve seen in the movies and on television about drowning victims was, for the most part, wrong-the thrashing, the waving for help, the shouting-not how it usually happens, it seems.
Huh. From the title, I expected this to be a report on someone’s first visit to Yahoo Answers.
I was shocked that I couldn’t recall even once seeing a drowning scene in the movies or on television that didn’t show hands-above-the-head thrashing and flailing, and those were precisely what I was looking for when I took friends and family to the beach or pool.
Yep, I almost drowned when I was 21 when drunken friends threw me into the deep end. As I was losing my hand hold to the edge of the pool I said "I can’t . . . " and that was it. I could hear there drunken asses discussing whether I was drowning or just faking it. Luckily one of our drunken friends was a “real” lifeguard and pulled me to the surface. I didn’t go near the water and learn to swim for another 27 years.
Wow, good find. Thanks for sharing. I’ve sent that on to others.
I almost drowned when I was about three, in the pool of a family friend. It’s one of my earliest memories. I didn’t thrash or flail. I remember not being afraid, actually. Mom spotted me in the water and rescued me.
She’d told my (much) older brother and sister to “keep an eye” on me. I’d been sitting on a pool float and fell off. The problem was that each of my siblings believed that the other was watching me. They felt really bad about what almost happened.
I didn’t learn to swim until I was ten.
I took my kids to the Smokies last year, and we hiked out to a waterfall with a swimming hole in front of it. Both of them can swim, but the Weeping Princess doesn’t swim as well as her older brother (they’re 12 and 14), and I watch them closely. There were a lot of people there, and as I sat on the rocks beside the water I lost sight of WP for a second. Stood up to find her and could tell immediately she was in trouble, not more than 8 feet from the edge and with people everywhere. She was doing exactly what the article describes; and even though she was looking right at me, she obviously was not seeing me.
I think I was so scared I couldn’t even talk, because I just hit the ground moving as quickly as I could (which was not very damn quick, let me tell you) with no shoes on slippery sharp big rocks. I made it to the water and still had way too far to go when her brother came barreling out of the shallows on the other side of the trees, got her by the arm, and pulled her to where she could get her feet under her.
I still get sick to my stomach thinking about it. I really think he saved her life. <shudders>
Thanks for posting this. It really ought to be a sticky thread…in every forum…on every message board…
I saw that same article the other day and found it interesting as well. But then I also saw an article about how you can drown hours after getting out of the water and that’s pretty damn freaky to me.
WHY hasn’t someone made a youtube video on this topic? With the short attention span most people have and the fact that this is mostly a visual phenomenon, I wish someone would make a video showing what drowning is really like so I could distribute it to people.
[edit] AH, someone did make a video since I last looked for one. Here we are: Recognize the signs of drowning