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I almost drowned as a kid too, maybe a couple of years younger. Out in rural Ireland I was jumping from rock to rock at edge of a small lake and fell in. I remember it was actually a very calm experience - sinking down underwater with eyes open, then coming back up a little, then an arm from above came down into the water and dragged me out. Luckily one of my elder cousins had seen me fall in. My parents were there too, but oddly I can't remember ever talking to them about it... I guess fell in, got pulled out, end of story!

I taught/got my daughter to swim at an early age (4-5) for the safety benefit. I'd just take her to the pool once a week and we'd hang out and play, and over a year or two she just learnt to swim from being in the water!

I head from a friend that they had a similar experience of calm when almost drowning as well.

Scroobius Pip talked about something similar in 1000 Words as well: https://youtu.be/7mrSi1DgCcI?t=69

> Then my feet slowing hit the bottom of the pool, this startled me and it occurred to me I could jump and maybe catch the edge of the pool.

A really startling story. That is one of my nightmares as a parent. I really need to learn my kids to swim soon.

I wonder if you could actually stand on the bottom with your head over water if you tried? Like it is really hard to "jump" under water. And you don't really sink until your lungs are filled with water (I believe?).

If you exhale you’ll probably find you sink quite well. And ‘jumping’, even just using your feet/ankles will be enough to move you up 5-8 feet. Give it a try (assuming you can swim!)

> If you exhale you’ll probably find you sink quite well.

That depends on how fat you are. And if there's any salt on the water.

Unless you are extremely obese, most of your buoyancy will come from your lungs, no?

The OP is about how much buoyancy is left after you empty your lungs. Approximately all of our normal buoyancy comes from the lungs.

Yes, that's what I'm saying - unless you are quite obese, your body fat will not be so huge a factor that it will cause you to float with your lungs empty. You might not sink quite as far but still.

Generally (assuming a healthy weight) women float and men sink, due to women having a few percentage points more body fat. I imagine children sink as well as men though.

> few percentage points

For high school wrestling we got body fat analysis done. The, fit and healthy, women on the team were in the %30s while men down to the single digit %.

That sounds highly inaccurate.

Fit women (just regularly fit, not even athletes) have body fat percentages in the 20s.

And unless all of you had been cutting for an event (in which case, why weren't the girls also doing that?), I highly doubt all the boys on your team had body fat percentages in the single digits. See e.g. this random sampling of NCAA wrestlers[0] with an average of ~14% body fat even excluding heavyweights.

Not to mention that describing high school students as "men" and "women" casts a fair bit of doubt on this story ever actually happening.

0. https://www.levelchanger.com/blog/2020/3/24/how-fat-are-coll...

It also depends on the type of fat. People with high density fat (like me) can be 100 pounds overweight (or more), and still be negatively buoyant. I have to work to stay afloat.

My wife has low density fat, and she can't sink or dive for love or money.

In general, at least some ability to swim is a pretty basic skill. It should happen much earlier (and it did in my case) but my undergrad required passing a swim test or at least taking the Phys Ed course.

While it's beneficial to learn swimming as young as you possible can people should be encouraged to learn it later too if they are at least mildy interested in water. I learned to swim very young pretty much on my own and thought I was decent, but it was only after taking some technique classes later on that made swimming longer distances actually enjoyable to me.

Swimming as competitive sports never interested me at all, and unfortunately the training aspect of swimming is way too often hardlinked with it. And many other sports hobbies suffer from the same "this is a pipeline to create professional athletes from children" mentality.

I was never a "good" swimmer. I was fairly negative buoyancy as a teenish and barely got the one mile Boy Scout patch at one point. Never had any interest in competitive.

I agree with what I think your basic point is. Swim well enough and comfortable enough so you probably won't drown in a trivial water situation or even doing stuff like canoeing/kayaking and that goes a long way.

Maybe it's my background but you end up in a river or a lake sooner or later. Or you step off into something that's a bit deeper than you expected. It seems pretty stupid to not be prepared for something that seems basically normal life for a lot of people that doesn't actually require a huge amount of work.

Many years ago my toddler fell into the deep-end of the pool and just gradually sank into the water, not even making a fuss. I was right there so I grabbed her and pulled her right out, but it's now seared into my memory like a slow-motion video I can never erase. Teach your kids to swim ASAP if there's any chance they'll ever be near a pool.

Recently I was in Hawaii, snorkeling in an area where I could walk around. I don't now how to swim, but I have been in shallow pools before. Unbeknownst to me, I was slowly drifting into a deeper area as I was busy just looking down at the fishies. Suddenly I realized my feet no longer could touch the bottom, and an initial panic set in. Then I quickly reasoned that I would just sink to the bottom (which was, about, 8 feet or so) and push myself off of it to reach the surface, then take a deep breath and do a doggie paddle-sort of a motion to get closer to the rocks nearby. If I had panicked, I would not have been able to hold my breath long enough. Luckily I did not at the moment and managed to reach the rocks (which were about 3 feet deep).

After that day, I swore to be more careful next time!

Snorkeling without knowing how to swim seems like a pretty bad idea in the first place…

Can't argue with that! Lesson learned.

Might I suggest that swearing to learn to improve your swimming skills may be more beneficial to your long-term survival? Plus a lot more fun once you have more confidence in the water.

I did learn some lessons. My kids are enrolled in swimming classes now! :-D

The idea of snokeling without knowing how to swim seems incredibly risky.

I live in a seaside tourist town. Here we learn to swim as young children, it is impossible not to know how to swim and now, as a parent, I understand that only the peace of mind of knowing that my children could swim without problems gave me the peace of mind to take them to the sea and be able to (fairly) relax. I often read about people who drown because they were swimming on the seashore without knowing how to swim. Often more than one (the first in difficulty forces others to attempt a rescue). They are often people who know little about the sea, newly immigrated non-EU citizens.

I honestly cannot understand how a sane person can enter the water knowing that any problem, a hole, a higher wave is an almost certain death sentence.

Could it be that in addition to teaching us to swim, our parents taught us to fear and respect the sea? And that this simple precaution "is out of fashion"?

I also grew up in a seaside town. Gorgeous place. Beautiful but we grew up with a healthy dose of respect for the sea. maybe we saw too much. But I would postulate the difference is in understanding the sea is moving, constantly in motion. If you do not understand that simple notion, it might be easy to misjudge.

Staying calm in water is the absolute number one most important part of surviving being in water.