You don’t have to float to be able to swim, propulsion will keep you far enough above the water to be able to breathe.
I taught swimming for 26 years to everyone from 6 month olds (water acclimation) to seniors to TOW (terrified of water) students, lots of people were convinced they could NOT swim, ever, but with a lot of time/patience/practice they could learn to move around pretty well. Not Michael Phelps well, but functional.
I’m a skinny guy: I’m 180cm and 60 kilos, and I can’t currently be bothered translating that into American, so just accept that I’m tall and skinny. Wirey and pretty near zero body fat. I’ve had this problem before of people refusing to believe that I do not float, but I’ve also known of other people, usually other skinny people, who also don’t float. It’s a real thing.
I don’t mean “I’m not very buoyant” - I mean I’m as buoyant as a brick. I sink. I do not have the strength to push myself up out of the water. There is simply no way I can swim, and I really hate people who do not know me insisting that I really could swim if I put my mind to it. No, there are people who can never swim. I’m one, there are others.
I believe you are incorrect in that you cannot learn, but you believe it so it’s a done deal, you will never learn to swim.
From about 5 feet under water.
Mom dropped me in a crowded pool at a resort. I think it was Banff? She had an arm under me, while I was practicing dog paddling. I slipped off and sank like a rock for some reason. I remember looking around underwater. There were little cement island things, lights and lots of peoples legs. I dog paddled back up and made it to an island. She found me and I spent some more time paddling around without help. A couple years later I did the Red Cross lessons and got the junior level. The lessons were at an indoor salt water pool. Very good.
Shakester, I understand completely. I took a swimming class as my last Phys. Ed. class in college. One guy, a body builder, was buoyant as a rock. When he propelled himself forward in the water, he just went under, deeper with each stroke. He dropped the class at the suggestion of the instructor who told him he’d never get through the deep end part of the class. My situation wasn’t as bad as I knew how to swim. The problem was that I was quite thin at the time and couldn’t stay above water just by floating, and one part was to simply keep my head above water in the deep end for twenty minutes. Floating was permitted, but not possible in my case. Treading water for twenty minutes is exhausting!
In a pool at age 4 in Lima, Perú.
The Harold Holt Memorial Pool, named for our Prime Minister who drowned (or hitched a ride on a Chinese submarine).
It really inspired confidence.
My high school had the requirement that we swim 100 yds in order to graduate. I didn’t realize for years that it was a school requirement, not a state requirement.
I took lessons at a beach on Cape Cod. Our house was a couple miles from the beach. I was 9.
I see they still offer lessons there 40 years later.
http://www.falmouthmass.us/beach/2016%20swim%20lessons%20descriptions%20.pdf
I’m not sure how to answer that question. When I was a kid my city had made a pool by digging out an area next to the the reservoir and filling it directly from the reservoir. It had a sand bottom and the sides were held up by staked logs. They put in a dock at one end with a diving board. To clean it they just emptied and refilled it. This would have been my first introduction to swimming by my parents. At age 7 I took formal lessons at a YMCA.