Swimming

[El Capitán]

When and how did you learn to swim. My dad took me to a little sandbar off the coast and dropped me off. He told me I better start swimming before the tide came in. Apparently it's how he and my uncles learned to swim. Wasn't as hard as I thought and I got to see a dolphin up close .

 

[bullet08]

Must have been 4 or 5. We used to go to a public pool that my father's underclassman owned. Usually, i would be dressed in bunch of floaties and people will just toss me in the pool. One by one, the floats were removed and I was swimming. Usually by they time, I was drunk with sips of beer I got from my father and his friends. Good times x)

My wife wasn't allowed to swim when she was a kid. Her parents were afraid she would drown. Our school had strict policy that every graduates will swim. Her swimming instructor had to toss her into the pool since she wouldn't go in. After awhile she learned.

My kids took years of swimming lessons.

 

[El Capitán]

Must have been 4 or 5. We used to go to a public pool that my father's underclassman owned. Usually, i would be dressed in bunch of floaties and people will just toss me in the pool. One by one, the floats were removed and I was swimming. Usually by they time, I was drunk with sips of beer I got from my father and his friends. Good times x)

My wife wasn't allowed to swim when she was a kid. Her parents were afraid she would drown. Our school had strict policy that every graduates will swim. Her swimming instructor had to toss her into the pool since she wouldn't go in. After awhile she learned.

My kids took years of swimming lessons.

In high school we also had to learn to swim. By that time I was swimming like a fish. If I ever have kids I will do the same as my dad did except it will be at my private lake. There is an island in the middle. No chance of it disappearing due to rising tides. No dolphins though, just the occasional snapping turtle.

 

[RustiePyles CPG]

My mom took me to the public pool when I was 3 or 4 and floated me out to the 3' deep section and let me go. I learned pretty quick.

When I went to Navy basic training I was shocked by the number of people who couldn't swim and had to be taught.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I've always had a pool, so I don't remember ever learning to swim. I just have always swam. However, I have never been able to open my eyes underwater without goggles. All water seems to make my eyes turn beet red and swell up.
About five or so years ago, I did take swimming lessons at the Y, because all of the other members had such great form while swimming laps, and I just didn't want to look like a dufus. I'm glad that I did, because I can swim much faster now, and look good doing it too, ha ha.

 

[El Capitán]

I've always had a pool, so I don't remember ever learning to swim. I just have always swam. However, I have never been able to open my eyes underwater without goggles. All water seems to make my eyes turn beet red and swell up.
About five or so years ago, I did take swimming lessons at the Y, because all of the other members had such great form while swimming laps, and I just didn't want to look like a dufus. I'm glad that I did, because I can swim much faster now, and look good doing it too, ha ha.

I've never had a problem opening my eyes in the ocean or fresh water but that chlorine in the pools does to me what it does to you.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I've never had a problem opening my eyes in the ocean or fresh water but that chlorine in the pools does to me what it does to you.

Even Visine will make my eyes swell up. I am not sure why, but it probably has something to do with being a redhead. Or, that's what I have always been told.

 

[El Capitán]

Even Visine will make my eyes swell up. I am not sure why, but it probably has something to do with being a redhead. Or, that's what I have always been told.

Wow never had that problem. If I couldn't see underwater without my eyes swelling up I'd be terribly upset. When I visit family in Florida I go snorkling and free diving. Missing out on the wildlife scares me. Well except for the surprise sharks. Those bastards come out of nowhere.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Wow never had that problem. If I couldn't see underwater without my eyes swelling up I'd be terribly upset. When I visit family in Florida I go snorkling and free diving. Missing out on the wildlife scares me. Well except for the surprise sharks. Those bastards come out of nowhere.

I just keep goggles in my workout bag, and a pair in my glovebox, just in case.
At home I have a drawer full for guests and such.

 

[scloyd]

When I was 7 or 8 my parents purchased a pool for the backyard. I didn't swim, I hopped around with my siblings. Then at 10 we moved to a town with a public beach. I spent many, many days at the lake with my friends. That's how I learned to swim. I'm not a great swimmer, but I can swim good enough to survive.

 

[alaskanpiper]

I was a "water baby". A local place that taught kids to swim starting at like 6 months. This resulted in many hilarious moments for my parents when we would vacation. I would be a 2 year old toddler and wobble up to the pool and jump right in. People would apparently freak out and dive in trying to "rescue" me, and my parents would finish laughing, and then kindly inform them that I knew how to swim.

 

[Christos D. Tsatsaronis]

Must have been about 4 I think. My mother learned me, in the sea, holding my body in horizontal position, keeping me up with her hand under my belly, I learned soon.
May she rests in peace.

 

[El Capitán]

Yall have some nice stories compared to my being abandoned on a sandbar.

 

[Flatfish]

I had lessons at the local pool. Was never (and still not) a fan of being underwater. Surely the point of swimming is to keep your head up.
I briefly (once) went to a canoe club. But when you capsize you are upside down. I didn't like that one bit.
So I took up dinghy sailing. When you capsize its only 90 degrees. And you fall out. I liked dinghy sailing.

 

[captainsousie]

Took 2 different rounds of swimming lessons and still can't swim. Had to be fished out of the pool and even had to be pulled out of a lake. Tried to drown twice, once with a life vest, and finally gave up. Oddly enough,my parents and sisters can't swim either.

 

[trudger]

Great Lakes kid here, learned at the YMCA so I could sail with my Grandfather. His boat, his rules. Been on or in my whole life. Amazing how people can underestimate water and weather.

 

[Briar Lee]

I learned to swim in the Osceola public swimming pool, about twenty miles away from our farm.

About 1965, when I was seven, my mother came home mad as hell the city fathers of Osceola had closed the pool rather than allow colored people to swim.

Oh, the lost innocence of being a child.

I remember thinking I never saw any colored people wanting to swim there, anyway.

My mother got angry with my father who said the city fathers of Osceola didn’t have an obligation to fund a swimming pool.

The next election in Osceola the racists were swept out of office and the pool reopened, desegregated.

In 1994 I fell off my boat doing a damned fool stunt of putting a 10 horsepower motor on a 3 horsepower rated boat.

It was a lot of fun until I fell off.

The shore was over a hundred yards away.

I dog paddled until I got tired, flipped over and then was happy to discover I could still float, just like I did in the Oceola pool.

Hillbillies can’t swim, worth a damn.

 

[Flatfish]

Funny story with this boat.
I thought it was a club boat, and in the photo I am taking the old tub to third place in the regatta. Got mentioned in Yachts and Yachting Magazine.
Then the following year I went to borrow it again and the club told me I couldn't use that boat. It wasn't theirs.
So I had effectively stolen someone's boat for the day.

 

[HawkeyeLinus]

Lessons at the public pool starting at age 5, eventually Red Cross Junior and Senior lifesaving and taught lessons to kids at the pool for the whopping sun of $2 per hour in the early spring mornings - had a slew of yards at $3 per yard - was rolling in dough, haha. Moved to a new town at age 15 worked my grandparents’ farm in the summers and when home on weekends other things at the pool and elsewhere were far more interesting than teaching swimming.

 

[ssjones]

My father was stationed in Germany in the early 1970's. The US Army operated several luxury hotels in Bavaria, and they have have been pretty inexpensive, as we stayed in one two or three times each year (and my father a notorious cheap-skate). One was on Lake Chiemsee, near one of King Ludwigs castles. They had a swim area, and the shore was quite rocky. The water was freezing, but my father insisted my brother and I learn how to swim there. it was frightening, but, I did learn to swim.

It looks like these hotels were turned back over to the German government in the early 2000's.

Oddly, my parents had no pictures of these trips, but we have several boxes of slides that may contain them.
Internet photo here.