Learning to swim

[Marten]

My parents tried to get me to learn to swim when I was too little (I wasn't even long enough to stand at the bottom), so I had an instinctive dislike for swimming. I learned to swim later, when I was about eleven, and today I can swim better than most other people, since I swam in a water rugby club's pre training group.

And about Miss Chickens story, that is just awful. Children shouldn't be treated like that.

 

[Yeoman Randi]

Miss Chicken, i agree with everyone here. That guy was sadistic child abusing bastard.

Growing up we had a built in pool but i never learned to swim. If i was thrown out of a boat i would go down to Davy Jones's locker in a matter of minutes.

 

[Gaith]

My father taught me to swim the hard way; he threw me out into the middle of a lake, and when, after an hour or so, I managed to improvisedly doggy-paddle back, he looked at me and said, "well, son, looks like you've got it."

...

Y'know, in retrospect, learning to swim wasn't all that tough. The tricky part was getting out of that burlap bag.

 

[RoJoHen]

I took swim lessons at a school, but I'm not really sure why. I already knew how to swim before I took the lessons. All that class really forced me to do was learn to open my eyes under water.

I always get confused when people say they don't know how to swim. It always seemed fairly instinctual to me.

 

[K-Star]

I failed level 2 swim lessons because I refused to jump in because I'm afraid of heights. So much so that even jumping from the pool's edge is enough to freak me out ("Just pretend the surface is solid!" you say. Uh, I can see THE TOP OF THE INSTRUCTOR'S HEAD from here. I KNOW I'm gonna fall.) Rather pathetic, being the oldest in the class (almost as old as the instructors), and being the only kid who refuses to jump.

I failed level 1 for similar reasons, but when I retook it they didn't make anyone jump. Plus, I'd already begun to teach myself how to swim by then. It came to me in a dream... really. I had a dream that I was underwater and I paddled my arms forward and tada I was swimming! So I tried it at lessons and it worked!

Later on, a friend taught me how to dog paddle. Now I could keep my head above water and still swim!

My current way of swimming isn't an orthodox method by any means (move my arms in a breast stroke, keep my head above water like in a dog paddle, and do a frog kick with my legs), but at least I can get from point A to point B without drowning. I kept practicing on my own and eventually taught myself how to tread water.

I know how to do a side crawl stroke too (learned that first from watching Link swim in Ocarina of Time, then watching my 6th grade teacher do it at a pool party while she was racing one of her students.)

 

[propita]

Damn! Horrible way to learn to swim, Miss C!

I "learned" when I was little, but I consider it more "keeping-myself-alive-when-I'm-in-water" than real swimming. I can get from one end of the pool to another and since I gained some weight, float really well.

Hubby was to have learned in high school, but the phys ed teacher's instructions were, "Hey, you Rocks! Sit on the side of the pool and try not to drown there." For Hubby's extra weight around the middle, he will still sink to the bottom and has panicked when trying to float on his back in 3 feet of water...and the water covers his face as he sinks. He stays in the shallow end, but even then he avoid pools generally.

 

[scotpens]

. . . I “learned” when I was little, but I consider it more “keeping-myself-alive-when-I'm-in-water” than real swimming.

That reminds me of what George Carlin said: “Swimming isn't a sport. Swimming is what you do to keep from drowning.”

 

[nevermore]

We had a pool in the backyard when I was a baby, so I learned as an infant for obvious safety reasons (this was the 70's; we didn't have any ugly safety fences around the pool, just a couple of really big marijuana plants). I have no recollection of it, obviously, but my dad basically tossed me in and I learned to roll over and float immediately, and could apparently cross the pool within a couple of months or something like that. I was also on swim teams as a little kid and generally spent every day of every summer from age 5-12 at the pool (when we weren't on the boat). Because we sailed a lot and I refused to wear a life jacket, my dad made me learn to tread water for an hour in waves. I really enjoyed it, actually. I'd voluntarily jump off and tread water for ages, just to get away from my parents.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I learned to swim when I was very young: I don't remember it clearly, but I know it was my grandfather that taught me, since I used to spend the summer with my grandparents at the seaside. I loved it. I took swimming lessons for some years in grade and middle school to improve my technique, but I eventually grew bored with it. Nowadays my strokes is not sharp as it used to be, but I still love to be in the water. Snorkeling is great fun.