Can You Swim?

[Barbara]

I can swim but I don't like to swim very much. I like kayaking, sailing etc. and I know from experience I can get out of a kayak after capsizing and come up and be alive but I would not go to a swimming pool to swim length after length. And of course I swim in the sea (if it's a warm enough sea) but I would try to stay away from some high surf.

[Freedom]

Oh yeah, I can swim!

Mom started me at Mom and Tot classes at the Y when I was 2 1/2 years old. Since then, I took lessons, became a life guard, taught swimming, took synchronized swimming and performed in shows for 3 years, and competed on a team.

Oh yeah, I can swim!

[Logan]

I miss having the opportunity to swim regularly. I have been swimming since I was 3 years old. Like many of you, I have a mother who never learned to swim and is terrified of water, so it was ultra important to her to have us be good swimmers. She knew she would never be able to save us, herself.
I started swimming competitively when I was 4 years old on the YMCA year round swim team and kept doing it up until high school. I think I took every Red Cross swimming course there was (there were tons of levels, named after fish) and many times I was the only one in the class. I got my Red Cross lifesaving and water safety instruction certification and life guarded one summer and taught swimming lessons from infants to adults. It was great fun, but it was at an indoor pool. Yuck! My friends were getting tan, life guarding at the country club and I was at the YMCA. LOL! I taught swimming lessons one more time right after I graduated from college, part time, in the late afternoons when I got off of work. That was at a YMCA too.

Genny, there are adult swimming classes available at the YMCA, YWCA and country recreation facilities. You should learn in the environment that is most comfortable to you. I wish you were in SC and I would teach you myself!

[k9krazee]

I like to think I'm a strong swimmer. I had Lifeguard and had PADI rescue diving training when I was 16.

We have a cabin on the lake that we'd visit during the summer and then when I was about 7 we got a pool. I always wished that I would have gotten into competitive swimming in school. Oh, and in high school everybody has to swim once a week.

[smokey the elder]

Everyone in my neighbor had a pool, and we had a YMCA within walking distance. I started taking formal swim classes at 8 and I was already such a strong swimmer they bumped me up a couple ranks! I swam competitively in high school (500m free.) However, I've become sensitized to pool chlorine and can't swim any more...bummer.

[Suki Wingy]

Oh me too. Everyone I knew growing up could swim. I've gone through lifeguard training and will be SCUBA certified as soon as I take the open water portion of the test thingy.

[Felicia's Mom]

I learned how to swim in high school. I have not done any for a long time though.

[ramanth]

My grandparents owned a cottage on a lake, so I've been in the water since birth.

When we'd visit in the summertime, my sisters and I would race from the car, be in our swimsuits and leaping off the dock before my parents would have the car unpacked. *laughs*

I was in Swim Club in Junior High, but found I enjoyed recreational swimming and water sports more than professional.

I love to swim.

[RICHARD]

Sometimes you feel like sinking right to the bottom....

http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid101756.asp

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Wor...00907115327970

It's really tough to be the butt of someone's sick jokes.

[MoonandBean]

I don't even remember learning but we had a nice ingrown pool in my yard growing up and I used to swim laps as exercise. Grew up on LI so I was always in the ocean and diving through the waves. I miss it. Darn...now I need to go plan a trip to the beach

[CountryWolf07]

I never really learned how to swim, actually. I don't remember learning when I was little. Just never really had the opportunity to! I don't swim much, but I love to lay out in the water though - I get easily scared, though - I almost drowned when I was about 8.

[JuniorxMyxLove]

Absolutely not.

I've tried to learn, I took two years worth of lessons when I was younger. We never made any progress, because it took 1.5 yrs for me to put my head under water, hahaha.

I can kinda stay floating, if I flail my limbs a certain way. But I try to avoid doing so, as it's very odd looking and slightly painful.

this is also why I had so far avoiding taking freshman PE - there's a whole swimming segment...

[kitten645]

My/our scariest swiming related situation happened when I was 12 and my sister was 8. We were all fishes and took diving lessons. I was taking a swimming lesson and watched Jackie climb the high dive like she'd done so many times before. As she walked out she mis-steped and fell off sideways
You heard the whole swimming complex gasp! 100 or more people! Lifeguards dove into the water. Her guardian angel must have given her a shove because she just nicked her leg on the edge of the concrete! 12 foot high dive! She wailed and carried on with a small cut/bruise but was right back on in a couple of hours! Kids are resilient and fearless.
Claudia