Can you swim? Six kids in Louisiana couldn't.

I cannot fathom why my wife has trouble with the simplest tennis stroke.

Wife cannot fathom why I cannot execute the simplest swimming stroke.

Diff'rent strokes, I guess.

 

Isn't there an Al Campanis Memorial Foundation program that offers free swimming lessons to low-income youth?

 

Yeah, but a bad forehand won't land you in the morgue.

 

Neither will an inability to swim, if you stay out of the water.

 

This is very true.

Someone who works at my shop could have drowned in that depth of water when her kayak flipped, she got stuck and couldn't get out/flip it back over. Fortunately, someone was with her, realized what was going on, and got out of his kayak to help flip her upright.

 

My cousin was an ocean lifeguard in Laguna Beach during breaks from college. They never allowed anyone to grab onto them. If someone latched on, the lifeguard would immediately dive underwater so the person would let go. They brought out a float for the victim to grab onto because otherwise the lifeguard would go down with the victim.

 

I'm not trying to sound like an uncaring ass, but ditto on RickStain. Can't swim, then don't swim. And definitely don't go in a place that has un-moderated water conditions, like a river.

It's not railing against The Man to note that many who can't/don't swim had ancestors who couldn't/didn't because of povery/segregation. They never taught their kids to swim, who didn't teach their kids to swim, and on and on. Eventually, even though the impoverished can break free and de jure segregation is outlawed, the culture remains.

I live in a mixed-but-mostly-middle-class neighborhood in the middle of Atlanta. Have some friends with a pool on their apartment building's roof. Every Saturday in summer has the same scene: Diverse crowd, but it's always whites in the pool; blacks in the lounge. Everyone there has had ample opportunity in their life to learn how to swim, but some just don't because it's an ingrained thing at this point.

 

I took lessons as a kid, did swimming in middle school and HS PE, but had some somewhat strong reactions to chlorine about then.

A couple years out of college -- and about 10 years since I had last been in a pool -- I go to the apartment complex's pool on a really hot day and try to swim. I did nothing but flail around and could never float. The "oh, crap, I forgot how to swim" moment hit, and I haven't been in water since.

Now that I have a 3-year-old, I think I'm going to have to re-learn, just in case I need it for survival reasons.

 

Rick, the shit covers 3/4ths of the planet. You might want to be able to handle yourself in it.

 

It's a lot easier to drown in this sort of situation than a lot of you think. Any sizable river will have a strong pull to it that can overcome even an experienced swimmer.

I found that out the hard way a few weeks ago. I learned how to swim when I was about 5, and I've always been a fairly decent swimmer. Hell, I even did the mile swim at Boy Scout camp one year (hardest thing I've ever done in my entire life).

But I learned my limitations when I went on a canoe trip with my kids for Father's Day. We beached the boats just past this little fall that has a chute where the big thing is to ride through it into the deeper water beyond.

I swam across to where the kids were (they're all adults, BTW) and they talked me into riding the chute. I did, but when I got into the deeper water (about 10-15 feet deep), the current just really seemed to sap my strength and for the first time in my life I thought there was a possibility I could drown. I managed to get to the bank OK, but it really shook me up.

 

And the vacuum of space covers 99.999999999999999% of the universe. So what? I don't plan on getting tangled with that, either.

 

I was taught during lifeguard training to prepare to kick the thrashing, panicky person. For the grand finale, we had to "save" the pool's manager, who was in the vicinity in weight as Mark Mangino. He would randomly "attack" us, and one girl nailed him in the nuts.

He never randomly attacked a potential lifeguard again.