On my dad’s side of the family about two generations were not allowed to swim or learn to swim because my great uncle died of pneumonia. To this day I have no idea what the hell that was about. I don’t now if he aspirated nasty water and got some kind of complication, or it was an old wives’ tale, or what. But the net result is that my grandad’s generation and my dad’s generation grew up forbidden to go into any body of water (including swimming pools) if the water was higher than their belt, and they certainly weren’t allowed to learn to swim. (What? And put their faces in the water?!? Are you crazy?!?)
To my knowledge, my dad can’t swim. But I’m not sure if he ever had to try in high school or Boy Scouts or anything. Phys-ed was mandatory in school for him, but I have no idea if that included mandatory swimming lessons. He was also in the army, but I don’t know if they ever made him swim either.
Luckily, the water=death equation stopped at his generation.
I live in Philadelphia where there are many creeks and rivers, it is quite rainy and floods often. Multiple people in the area drown every year because they find themselves in deep water, usually unintentionally. One middle-aged woman drowned in her own basement the last time we had a big rain. I agree that swimming is an essential life skill.
How you get into the water to begin with is a big deal too though. I’m a swimmer, but if I ended up in a river unexpectedly with my hiking boots attached to my feet I’d be in big doo-doo. Capsizing a canoe is not the same experience as falling out of a powerboat zipping across a lake at full throttle either.
Getting into cold, deep, or rapid water unintentionally is a bad thing no matter what.
I agree that extremely cold water can present a problem for anybody, especially in freezing temperatures. And falling out of a rapidly moving powerboat can certainly be problem if you hit a solid object or the moving propeller.
However, if you’re prepared, it’s generally not a big deal to fall out of a boat. This is why Boy Scouts does capsizing drills in all of their boating classes. In fact, we played a game called “Assault Boats” where the Scouts are given buckets and attempt to capsize other people’s canoes by filling the opposing canoes with water or manually capsizing them by grabbing their boat. (I was there in a rowboat as one of the three lifeguards.) We emptied out capsized canoes using T-rescues in the middle of the lake repeatedly, giving the Scouts good practice in how to do this, and how to get back into a canoe that’s just been relaunched in the middle of a lake. Per BSA regulations, everyone was wearing a lifejacket, of course.
Last year, we did a whitewater trip, and several people fell out and got to ride down the rapids sans raft, feet first. Everyone was wearing lifejackets and helmets. Even I fell in once when we hit a rock and someone accidentally pushed me in the drink.
And I’d much rather fall into deep water than the shallow whitewater I fell into.
When I was on holiday aged 3, I had a rather unpleasant experience where I slipped and fell into the deep end of a swimming pool and pretty much traumatised me everytime I even thought about going swimming. I had on-off lessons for about 7 years after this and eventually gave up all hope at the age of 10, as every lesson or session with my mother (who is a really strong swimmer) resulted in massive panicking, sinking and inhaling of what felt like large quantities of water.
About this time last year I eventually decided that I would go to the adult swimming lessons at my local sports centre and I am pleased to say that at some point, I started to be able to relax and can now make it across the pool a couple of times on my front, and float for a short while on my back.
It is pretty ignorant to say things like “Everyone can swim/float” as I can assure you it took every inch of my courage to start going to the lessons and took a long time to believe that I wasn’t going to drown everytime my feet left the floor.
I would whole-heartedly recommend any none swimmers who have a similar scheme near them to give it a shot, especially if it’s been a few years since their last attempt. I have been extremely lucky that the teachers I have are really supportive and that there are lots of other people at the lessons who at some stage have all been in the same position as myself.
Sorry for rambling on, but this is still a passionate thing for me, as I never believed I would be even slightly comfortable in a swimming pool, let alone something I can now enjoy.
Not really. Everyone CAN do that to some degree. Unless you’ve some sort of physical disability, there is no reason that you can’t learn to keep yourself from immediately drowning. Beyond that it is only mental; and while that may be very hard, and even terrifying to overcome, it CAN be done. You yourself are proof of that.
I can’t really swim. I’m not afraid of the water, in fact, I enjoy being in and around it. But I’m really uncoordinated - I’m lucky I can walk, for pete’s sake, and all that arms moving and feet kicking and head turning and breathing seems to be more than I can handle. When I’m in deep water I just dog paddle around, or float on my back. I love snorkling because I can paddle around without getting so out of breath, and I can paddle pretty effectively with the fins and all.
My mom took me to lessons when I was 6, but I wasn’t interested at all. I just wanted to get in the pool and play, being 6 and all. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pool at a public school in California, even down south (where I grew up), so there’s a class I didn’t flunk.
It feels that way, floundering in water is as close as I can get to remembering how it felt before I was able to ride a bike properly.
Put it this way (for the swimmer) how can you swim? I mean, wade into water waist deep and you’re pushed this way and that, try to float and you sink, the water blurs your vision, it gets into your ears and you can’t hear properly, try to right yourself and you find your sense of balance is out of kilter with your other senses…
I mean, I can see why it would be fun to swim, to be a fish for a bit. And I hope my daughter picks it up easily at school (in what I hope are thoroughly chlorinated pools). I’m just a lost cause though, for the reasons above.
I don’t want to get offensive, but this degree of “I’m right and everyone in this thread who has personal experience otherwise is wrong” is right up there with the best of Der Tris.
Buy yourself a plane ticket to Vermont, and I will happily demonstrate. You can correct my position until the cows come home, and I will still sink.
It really doesn’t matter, as I can swim quite well - and could, even when failing to satisfy the assholes at the Red Cross. You apparently would get along with them just dandy.
Swimming is instinctive - for babies. However, like many instincts, it’s one we grow out of.
I’d say that swimming is a useful skill for the extra reason that it’s one of the forms of exercise least likely to cause injury. It’s a useful skill to have for down the years if and when your joints have started to protest when you run or play tennis or even when you walk.
My daughter’s primary school (in the UK) did have mandatory lessons, but most of the kids there still can’t swim because the lessons were bloody awful.
They couldn’t cope with my daughter, who was an excellent swimmer, just giving her the same exercises as all the rest. She was given a ten-metre certificate when she was 9, 5 years after she’d first been able to do it; her swimming actually got worse because she was trying to be like her friends.
The other kids learnt not to be afraid of the water, and perhaps to float and tread water, but that’s it. That’s better than nothing, but not by much. (I helped out at the school including a couple of swimming lessons, and had several of the kids over for a swimming party, hence my knowledge of the lessons and the kids’ resultant skills). One of the kids surprised me by how amazingly quickly she would sink - she’d just step in and be gone.
Everyone can learn to swim if they’re taught well.
I don’t understand why you are reacting with such hostility. From my point of of view, it’s you insisting that “you’re right and everyone in this thread who has actual personal experience otherwise is wrong.” But it’s not just all of us who are wrong, it’s every swimming instructor you’ve ever had. :rolleyes:
In any event, I wasn’t even trying to prove you wrong–I simply offered up my experience with the many other people I’ve seen demonstrate the same skill. My comments throughout this entire thread have been to help people who expressed comments like they could never learn to float on their back and/or swim. Again, in my experience, every person who told me that they couldn’t float had the wrong body position, or somehow expected they were going to float completely horizontally on the surface of the water, and when this didn’t happen, they did something like look forward or sit up.
The official Red Cross swim instruction skill guidelines do state that a student is supposed to float on their back motionless for 15 seconds. If I were teaching a class (and I did get certified to teach Red Cross swim classes years ago), and a student was doing everything properly (correct body position, etc.), I probably wouldn’t have a problem with a student adding a bit of a sculling action with their hands. However, I would be surprised if that were truly necessary. In my experience, it’s far more likely that a person who says they can’t float doesn’t have the correct body position.
Indeed, out of the hundreds of Scouts at summer camp who have to do the exact same thing for their swim test, I’ve never seen anyone not be able to float on their back motionless, once they learn the proper position. So that’s my personal experience.
YMMV–I will freely admit that you may be that statistical anomaly who truly can’t float motionless, but it would surprise me.
Finally, I don’t need a plane ticket to Vermont. I’m driving up there this weekend for a backpacking trip–it’s just a few hours away from Connecticut.
You’ll note I made a distinction between falling out of a canoe vs. power boat at high speed. That’s a very different animal. I doubt very much that the Boy Scouts let fall onto your backs while they were traveling at top speed in a power boat. It’s too dangerous.
I’ve seen a kid get knocked right out from landing face first in the water coming off a speedboat unexpectedly (flotation device saved his ass). At least when you’re water skiing you know it’s coming and you’re better prepared for it.
As an avid kayaker, I’ve dumped thousands of times. Very different expreience than coming off speedboat by surprise.
Yes, I think it was. There was a container at grandma’s so you could wash your hair. It was expected that you pour water over your head rather than dunk your head underwater to rinse in a bath.
ETA: They also insisted that you tuck your shirt in because a draft up your shirt could damage your kidneys.
You don’t HAVE TO swim in the same sense that you don’t HAVE TO skydive. I’m always super-careful about water – if I’m on a boat, the life jacket it ON. If I’m at a pool party with a bunch of jokers, I stay several paces away from the edge of the pool.
In a prior thread on this topic, it was revealed that few people (if any) really and truly “float” the way a piece of Styrofoam floats … it always depends on doing specific things just so (air-filled lungs, body position, etc.). It’s just that the folks that float well forget the effort to the point of thinking there is no effort.
Perhaps. My problem is that pushing against the water – either with feet or hands – gets me almost no movement. It’s like water isn’t dense enough for me to push off against.
I could probably do a lot better with flippers and “hand flippers” (if such a thing exists) … I’d definitely need a way to get more push against the water.
Wish my fat helped me float … I could stand to lose 80 lbs, and that 80 lbs of fat sinks readily :shrug: Gotta lot of muscle, too, from football and weightlifting … but my beer gut doesn’t seem to counteract that
