I nearly died drowning | Hacker News Reader

I nearly died drowning

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207 pointsmooreds162 comments

My brothers daughter went to a private pool party that had a life guard and a 4 year old drowned. Apparently there were a lot of floaties in the pool and no one noticed him slip in. I was living in Miami at the time and it shook me immensely as I was a new dad, pools are everywhere, and the thought of losing my son who was 2yo was unbearable. I was at the apartment pool chatting with a friend who is a very advanced swimmer - the type that swims laps seemingly endlessly - and she asked “have you ever seen what would happen if he fell in the pool?”. I said no, and then she suggested I try it so that I would at least know. So I picked him up and with no warning tossed him in. He immediately froze under water, arms and legs outstretched in literally stunned silence. I counted to 5 and pulled him out and he was trembling with fear.

At that point I realized that the time it takes for a kid to drown is one breath. That may be 3 seconds, may be 10 seconds. It’s considerably shorter than the time it takes to run to the restroom, answer a call, pick up the pizza at the front door etc. They won’t fight for their life and splash, they’ll simply freeze stiff and die in silence.

I literally shared that story with every close friend I have with kids to warn them about how fast it can happen, now I’m happy to share it with you. I won’t bore you with another story concerning my brothers daughter who almost died while in swim class at the MIT pool but suffice it to say, if you haven’t taught your kids how to swim, I advise you not to trust them with anyone but yourself and your partner.

That's the kind of trauma that stays with someone for their whole life, and not a very nice thing to do to your kid. I hope you can make sure that he sees water as something fun and not threatening as he grows up.

Mercifully, you don't really start forming strong memories until you're about 3-4, and your brain is gloriously plastic until around 23, so, to say 'that's the kind of trauma that stays with someone for their whole life' isn't really the case.

They might be a little timid around water, but, get them in swim classes in a year or so, and they'll be zooming around in no time without a care in the world.

Unfortunately not true. Babies who experience trauma may never be able to tell you about it, but they will remember it the same way they remember that their parents are safe people: it shows up in their emotions, their nervous system, their reactions to stimuli that seem innocuous.

In other words “there appears to be a reorganization of cognitive and memory functions such that narrative memory for events prior to age three or four are difficult to access later in life. These two points have led to the pervasive, inaccurate and destructive view that infants do not recall traumatic experience…”

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_interest/child_law...

And if their parents aren't safe people, they remember that too.

I experienced feeling truly, deeply, completely safe for the first time in my thirties. It rocked my world. Things almost didn't seem real immediately afterward, like I was dreaming. I compare it to visiting France when I could speak Spanish, but not French. My brain wanted to reply to people in "not English," so kept trying to spit out Spanish responses to French questions. My brain didn't have a context for "safe" other than "not real life," so it tried to react like I was dreaming.

I don't want to go into all the details about what it's like to try to teach your parasympathetic nervous system how to come fully online when you're this far into adulthood, but I recommend making sure children do have somewhere they can practice coming down from stress way before they're my age.

But this is just a feeling, not reality?

e.g. The risk of being instantly erased by a falling meteorite/random airplane part/space debris/etc. is never literally zero. Just very very low.

My sister died very suddenly, apparently fine one minute and irrecoverably dead the next. I know I'm never completely safe.

Maybe the better term in this case is "protected," but I'm not sure. "This person, here with me, is not a threat to me, and I know that in my bones. Further, he would interpose himself between me and any threat that should arise in this moment." That's the feeling.

Most people experience that as infants. Parents are supposed to love their children this way. And it's important for the neurological development of the parasympathetic nervous system. I just didn't get to until my thirties.

Absolutely: it’s only because of the tremendous impact of lacking felt safety as an infant that we know they can tell the difference.

pretty sure that getting born trumps any trauma you can give a 2 yr old.

I'm not sure how you're so sure.

People being born isn't a new development. If it were significantly harmful, evolutionary pressure would have had ample time to apply.

On the other hand, I can think of plenty of trauma that wouldn't be good for a 2 year old child.

On second thought, of course there is plenty of trauma you can give a two yr old, my brain happily didn't go there during my earlier reply. I meant by actions of a parent with good intentions.

I can confirm from personal experience that traumatic experiences seem to transcend the mind-wipe that happens in mid-childhood. At a very early age, I had a form of Krupp, and some of my earliest memories are not being able to breathe, and the panic/anxiety of it. After several decades, it's something I hardly ever think about (somewhat backing up what you are saying), but I definitely remember it.

I would also be hesitant to do this to kids on purpose. My son fell into a pool at the age of ~1, and was pulled out by my wife within a few seconds. However, he had a massive fear of water, and took a long time and concerted efforts to make him comfortable with learning to swim.

If you had an infection of the upper airway that made it hard to breathe, you had croup.

If there was a massive steel foundry pushing down on your chest, it was probably Krupp.

You're right (though it is actually spelled krupp in my language, and I assumed it would be the same in others, as it has no inherent meaning).

> Mercifully, you don't really start forming strong memories until you're about 3-4...

A popular misconception that needs to be challenged, and one that I fear encourages some non-negligible deal of neglect and abuse.

Children under 4 years old have surprisingly excellent memories, extending years back. But something happens around age 4, possibly a burst of neurogenesis, which scrambles most of whatever episodic or autobiographical memory is in the brain. Other forms of memory endure the transition just fine. Motor skills are obviously retained, as are other life-long skills like how to speak (and for the hyper-literate, how to read). Acquired fears certainly survive, and though they can be overcome... they're still around to actually have to be overcome. Early childhood trauma, and especially abuse, absolutely leave an imprint, even if the events themselves are no longer clearly recalled.

I have strong memories of significant-to-me events that happened when I was 1-2 (moving houses, falling out of bed as an infant, getting scratched by the family cat, and the birth of my sister, just to name a few).

My earliest memory is at about 18 months.

We dramatically underestimate the ability to think and reason for very young kids. Laying down memories included. I believe memories are more likely to set in when an experience is novel and new. Big events like you cite fall into that territory.

I think a lot of those who can't remember things before age 5-6 is because they had extra-stable environments.

What did you remember about the birth of your sister?

> Mercifully, you don't really start forming strong memories until you're about 3-4

You do. It is just childhood amnesia kicks in at some point, and you lose an access to those memories. There is no accepted explanation what happens, I personally prefer the idea, that your memory qualitatively changes in spite of language acquisition, you get another (upgraded) way to access your memory, and then you forget the old (legacy) way. I like this explanation because my own memories from the time I was ~3 yo are strange (conditionally on I could reproduce them well and not to invent things), they are almost eidetic.

But it doesn't matter to be frank, because your memories were active and accessible at some period of your life and they influenced your development already, maybe changing the development track completely. Father throwing his kind into a pool? Kid was terrified? It is a very emotional experience which is a betrayal of kid's trust, which probably will never be without limits again. It may destroy any trust to other humans as well. Though it may pass without any long term consequences also. People are unpredictable in this regard. But you'd better avoid such experiments with your kid.

> your brain is gloriously plastic until around 23, so, to say 'that's the kind of trauma that stays with someone for their whole life' isn't really the case.

Some things a sticky. If they are strong enough to change behavior at once, if the changed behavior becomes a habit, then habit will enable trauma to resist any brain's plasticity and ability to heal.

And you know, it may be a very rational thing for a kid to stop trusting his father if the father can throw the kid into water just so without any thought of how kid will feel. Probably the kid should be wary around his father.

> I personally prefer the idea, that your memory qualitatively changes in spite of language acquisition, you get another (upgraded) way to access your memory, and then you forget the old (legacy) way. I like this explanation because my own memories from the time I was ~3 yo are strange (conditionally on I could reproduce them well and not to invent things), they are almost eidetic.

I think people stick too much to the idea that human memory is kinda like computer memory.

"Remembering" trauma could also mean that the brain's structure changes in some way as a result of trauma without necessarily recording how the event exactly went.

Reminds me of a video of WW1 shell shocked soldiers I saw recently. It's not the exact memory record of the events which broke those men. Something more profound changed in their brain.

I do not suppose that human memory is like a computer. Thinking of how it works, I believe it works a bit like LLM, you formulate a prompt and get memories. It is an automatic process an you do not see the details, like what the prompt was used.

And suppose if at some point you've learned how to a) store memory in a categorized form; b) use prompts formulated in a language (or at least in categories of language), then you can "forget" the old way of prompt generating.

> "Remembering" trauma could also mean that the brain's structure changes in some way as a result of trauma without necessarily recording how the event exactly went.

This is too vague to my taste. Isn't any memory a brain's structure change?

> Thinking of how it works, I believe it works a bit like LLM, you formulate a prompt and get memories. It is an automatic process an you do not see the details, like what the prompt was used.

In some ways, LLM seem to work kinda like brain. It doesn't remember the exact details, more like patterns, from which it then attempts to reconstruct the memory.

> Isn't any memory a brain's structure change?

Well, yes. I guess what I'm trying to say is that such events produce much larger changes in the brain in comparison to non-traumatic events. In the sense that the child's behavior changes as a result. For example, the child can gain a new phobia which can persevere much longer than the memory of the actual event. My overall point is that even if you forget the actual events, you will carry the consequences of such trauma anyway.

I'd recommend reading Bessel van der Kolk's The Body Keeps the Score.

The conscious mind is far from the only place the body stores memory that can impact us later in life.

Do you not have any memories from <3?

This is obviously false. I have memories from when I was 2 that my parents also remember.

> I have memories from when I was 2 that my parents also remember.

I doubt it.

How can you tell the difference between real memories and implanted memories[1]? Children as old as 11 have been successfully implanted with memories of things that never occurred by their parents, and who later testified that their parents told them nothing!

[1] Your parents told you at age 4 what you did at age 2, you remembered the act because it was told to you, you don't remember the act of them telling you.

> How can you tell the difference between real memories and implanted memories[1]?

Let's say something emotionally significant happened to you at the age of 2. Because it was significant, you keep recalling it regularly, maybe every week or so. Recalling and thinking about the memory is also strengthening it (and often altering it). There's not enough time to forget it if you keep refreshing the memory of it (kinda like LRU cache).

I have a couple of such early memories which I believe survived through this recall mechanism.

> Because it was significant, you keep recalling it regularly, maybe every week or so.

That's not how two year olds work. Even something as significant as losing a (or both) parents is still not significant enough to be recalled periodically, and we have many cases of that to support the hypothesis that "that's not how two year old brains work".

> I have a couple of such early memories which I believe survived through this recall mechanism.

I'm still skeptical. The first reason is that two year olds don't understand the concept of age in years (or age at all, TBH - they recognoise larger people and smaller poeple, but hafve no conept of age). The second reason is that the odds are very much against your hypothesis.

I have maybe ... two memories which I think were from age 2, but before age 3.

But I cannot determine if I was three or four at the time, instead of two. I cannot determine if they were real or a dream (because they are memories of an event of such non-significance[1] that no one else remembered).

I also cannot determine if they were not real and not a dream! I cannot tell if I "remember" them purely because when I was older my mum used to talk about the place they lived in when I was born, and with all the details, 6yo me simply interleaved actual facts with something my mind made up so that my made up memory is consistent with the facts I heard.

So, yeah, very skeptical when people tell me they can remember being two, because the odds are very much against it, and I say this as someone who has "memories" from 2yo, and I don't believe that those memories are, in fact, the memories of a 2yo me.

Not even a little bit.

[1] Memory #1: being taken to the bathroom one morning by an aunt who sometimes lived with us (and so babysat me quite often and would have done this quite often). I only have a memory of it happening once though, even though it must have happened at least a hundred times.

Memory #2: Looking at a patch of grass with a path that lead to the landlords house (also on same property, I was told when older).

With either of these, I can't be sure if I was 1, 2, 3 or 4 years old at the time. I also cannot tell if either was a dream, and if it was, was it a dream I had at 6yo, dreaming about being 2 yo or was it a dream I had when 2yo?

One of my earliest vivid memories is specifically of my 2nd birthday party, so I'm confident I wasn't actually 3 or 4. I might not quite have been 2, or I might have been a few days older than 2, but I can pinpoint my age within a couple weeks on either side. I remember details other people didn't notice or care about, like my disappointment that the teal color of the frosting on my cake was only on the surface, not all the way through (which I discovered by shoving my hands into it), and that the water was too hot when my grandma took me to wash the frosting off my hands. I remember it the same way I remember anything else.

It's probable I encoded my memories verbally much earlier than most children, though. My mom made a list in my baby book of the hundred words I could use correctly on my first birthday, and I was conversational and fluent well before my second.

The theory that "childhood amnesia" happens because we start encoding memories verbally and forget how to access the nonverbal ones would track with my experience. I just encoded mine verbally much earlier than most children.

Most people do not have memories of being two. But some of us certainly do.

> and we have many cases of that to support the hypothesis that "that's not how two year old brains work".

What are those cases preventing a 2-year-old remembering something from a week ago, thus strengthening the memory, rinse and repeat?

> The first reason is that two year olds don't understand the concept of age in years

In my case, the memory is linked to potty training and I know when that happened.

> I cannot determine if they were real or a dream (because they are memories of an event of such non-significance[1] that no one else remembered).

I'm kind of confused that on one hand you say that you don't know if it was a dream or reality, and on the other hand completely discount the possibility of having such an early memory.

> because the odds are very much against it

You keep mentioning the odds. How do you calculate them?

> What are those cases preventing a 2-year-old remembering something from a week ago, thus strengthening the memory, rinse and repeat?

I don't see how that is relevant to "we have all these examples of two-year-olds not remembering recent signficant events". I mean, we have observation that $X doesn't happen, but you know want to know what the mechanism is? Why is the mechanism at all important to the observation? With or without a plausible mechanism, the observation still stands.

> I'm kind of confused that on one hand you say that you don't know if it was a dream or reality, and on the other hand completely discount the possibility of having such an early memory.

Well, it's the same reason I am an atheist - as there's literally no evidence for any religions' specific story of a god, I discount the possibility of there being a god at all. People's subjective experience isn't "evidence".

> You keep mentioning the odds. How do you calculate them?

Because there's too many much more likely explanations, many of which I mentioned already, than a non-falsifiable belief in the memory of a two-year old.

Unless you want to dismiss the suggestibility of children, that's basically the most likely explanation.

> we have observation that $X doesn't happen

You can't prove a negative. Did you know that the blue whale was declared extinct in the 80s only to have a pod show up some years later? We observed there were no blue whales and then there were.

You didn't know about anyone with that early of memories and now you do.

> > we have observation that $X doesn't happen

> You can't prove a negative.

Sure, but it becomes exceedingly unlikely as lack of evidence of existence continues.

> You didn't know about anyone with that early of memories and now you do.

Actually, no I don't. I know many many people with self-reported experiences, which is not the same as anyone with early memories.

I mean, if we're talking purely numbers, I'm guessing that the number of people who report god, divinity or occult experiences far outnumber those who self-report early memories, so it should be completely unsurprising that I am unconvinced of an assertion that has even fewer self-reported positive data than religion and god.

Looking at your other response, I don't understand why you feel my skepticism warrants (what I consider, maybe wrongly) your rather forceful assertions that your worldview is correct.

Would you respond the same way to someone who asserted "Well, I'm skeptical that the Gods of Abrahamic Mythology ever existed"?

Would you really tell someone "You didn't know anyone who experienced the biblical god before, and now you do"?

How is your assertion of "You didn't know about anyone with early memories and now you do" at all different from "You didn't know about anyone who was visited by aliens and now you do"?

_Why_ do you think someone can't have that early of a memory? It seems inane. Ok, here is a study:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2021.1...

the earliest reported memory in this study is 14mo. We are not talking about aliens who's travel to our system defies our current understandings of physics. We are talking about memory. Similar, you have to rely on people to describe pain. Does that mean pain doesn't exist? Or doesn't exist for babies? We've studied memory a lot. Just because _you_ don't have an early memory doesn't mean someone else also doesn't.

I don't understand your position.

To assuage your faulty memory worries, the study's methodology and analysis included longitudinal interviews with children to go over memories over time and the researchers were convinced that they memories were valid enough for the study.

> I doubt it

My earliest memory is at 18 months. How do I know? I recall the building (and some activities and decor inside) that I was in and my mom only went into that building for some medical appointments when I was that age.

How do I know it is not a fake memory? Not sure how I could build a fake memory and then ask my mom about a given building and decor (at like age 12 or something while discussing earliest memories) and she tells me, surprised, that the last time we were there was when I was that young.

> she tells me, surprised,

Your mother has a perfect memory of all conversations she had with you or in your presence?

That's probably even more unlikely than retaining a memory from age 2 to age 12.

I don't know what world view of yours that I'm challenging. Self reflect on that. Where did I say my mom has a memory of a conversation at all? I have a memory of a conversation and an earlier memory. Do you really not recall having had conversations, especially when learning something new, from when you were young? If it is my mom's memory, do you not recall the last time you were somewhere else? Like, you couldn't name the year you had a surgery?

My mom and I, while I was 12, had a conversation. The conversation was about early memories. During that conversation I told of my earliest memory to which my mom replied, in that conversation, that that building and appointment(s) were from when I was 18 months old.

I was twelve when I learned what my age was at the time of the early memory. I am now much older than twelve and I recall this conversation with my mom (and I still recall the memory we were discussing).

She was surprised, when I was twelve, that I had such an early memory.

> I don't know what world view of yours that I'm challenging. Self reflect on that.

You're taking skepticism of extraordinary recall much more personally than I am being skeptical. Your remark about self-reflection is a good one for you to consider too.

I already considered the possibility that my 2yo self might have created memories I know have, and rejected it as too outlandish.

> The conversation was about early memories. During that conversation I told of my earliest memory to which my mom replied, in that conversation, that that building and appointment(s) were from when I was 18 months old.

Unless your mum has a perfect memory, it's far more likely that she mentioned it to you or in your presence as you grew, and then forgot she did. You have never considered the possibility that your mum probably forgot that you were told or within earshot when she told someone else all about that place?

I feel that I don’t have early memories, but for some reason I have a sense of the house I lived in before I was 3. My mother didn’t believe me so I draw her the floor plan one day. She said that’s great but where is the cellar? There apparently were steep steps to another floor which I wasn’t allowed to go and which didn’t exist in my memory. Now the memory seems very faded and I don’t think I could draw the place anymore.

> There apparently were steep steps to another floor which I wasn’t allowed to go and which didn’t exist in my memory.

Surely, if that had been a memory, you'd have remembered steps, even if you never went down them.

Like remembering a table in the middle of the room even if you never ate at it.

How do they even know they were 2, and not, say, 3 or 4? Most of my memories have been "implanted" when I have heard stories or I have seen photographs.

In my case, I would know roughly because some memories I have are from a certain house. My family moved to a different city before I was 3, so those memories can only be from 0-2 years of age.

I am sure I have such memories, too, but I cannot, for certain, say that I was 2 years of age or less at the time.

Yeah, just lucky that my family moved when I was young, offering a way to situate my memories in time, somewhat.

No need to question the previous comments experiences. Is there really anything which is "certain" when it comes to memories?

I'm not a memory expert, but as I recently read a book on the subject I think I have better than average understanding of it. If you can read Swedish or Finnish I do recommend it, the title is "Minnets Makt" by Julia Korkman (freely translated "The power of memory", official title is "Memory Dependent")[1].

The book taught me a lot about how memories work, how they are formed, recalled and modified during the years. And as memories are a core part of everyone's life, I think it would be good for more people to understand them better.

I did find a youtube video where the author, does a short lecture meant for law enforcement to teach them the basics of how memories work. As for them it is even more important to understand how meories, especially the recall of memories work when they interview people.

Disclaimer, I haven't watched it yet, only skimmed it but it does seem to cover the same concepts as in the book.

I recommend spending 27 minutes watching it for anyone who's curious about how the memory work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSyEs6feH0M&t=442s

[1] https://www.helsinkiagency.fi/memory-dependent/

Freud would like a word

None of what you wrote says there was no long lasting trauma, I am pretty confident there is even if onlyin subtle ways.

Have you ever heard about sub-consiousness? People behaving erraticaly without really controlling this aspect.

Ever met a person who was definitely not balanced down deep and even he/she couldnt point out why? I've met unfortunately many of those without even trying, they are all around us if you know what to look for/ask right questions.

Good for OP for testing such an extreme stuff so rest of us dont have to mess up out kids. I would never do such tests on my small kids, even remote chances for something bad is just cruel. Also, he writes it takes even 3s to drown a child, while describing doing even more.

I’ve let my toddler fall in the pool - the first few times were enough, and she’s now really careful anywhere near it - and still perfectly comfortable with getting in the water appropriately, with a parent.

As for trauma - it really depends. In her case, pretty sure she’s fine as in each case she was promptly rescued and as mentioned, no aversion to water, just to falling in.

In my case - I managed to have an earnest crack at drowning nearly a decade ago, aged 30 or so, and it hasn’t left me. Swimming between two small tropical islands. Tide changed. Calm waters suddenly became ferocious chop, and I swiftly realised I was being swept out to sea, and couldn’t fight the current - and I’m a respectable swimmer. Panic set in faster than I care to admit as I realised that I was pretty fucked.

Thank my lucky stars, someone was watching me, and appeared with a rib as I was starting to take lungfuls of water. I was purple, coughing up and vomiting seawater, sobbing.

Humbling. I’ve no problem with water in general since, but the ocean now scares the shit out of me, and I won’t get in it.

One of my first memories is drowning. We were going down the river and our plot crashed into a fallen tree and turned over. I was in a life saving jacket and I was about 3 or 4 years old. I remember the sun shining through the green-ish water, but I don’t remember being afraid at all.

I was quickly fished out and then I just sat on that same tree and wiggled my legs and enjoyed myself while everyone else scrambled to save the things from swimming away.

I’m also pretty sure that I was thrown into the sea to teach me to swim at some point, but I have no recollection of that, just stories from my parents.

That is to say - I love swimming and feel positively untraumatized by the whole thing, even though it is scary in retrospect. Everyone’s experience is different, just my anecdata point to add.

For me it was my swimming instructor in school that just pushed me into the water when I was afraid to jump in. I can swim, but I never got any of the swimming badges and I'm to this day (30+ years later) very uncomfortable with my head under water or even water in my face.

Particularly as it’s something you can easily learn about without doing that!

Idk if I was exposed to it like that, but I hate waters and don’t understand how the risk of death by drowning can be seen as “something fun”. I can swim to the shore if thrown out of boat, but see your deep bath “fun” as a group suicide tickling event. One choke, leg cramp, kick in the head and you’re in grave danger. I’d better walk the border on the roof rather than swimming through somewhere I can’t stand up.

I still have my first memory of going in a pool, I just jumped straight in and I was doing kind of star jumps with my head popping in and out of the water, while my mum took her sweet arse time fishing me out. I remember being annoyed at that for a while lol.

I have such a trauma. When I was at 2nd grade in primary school, they were bringing us to the nearest pool at a stadium for swimming lessons. The teacher was asking us to jump one by one in the water and to try getting closer to a life-bouye. Most of my schoolmates were able to catch the bouye but at the moment I jumped in the water, I froze and started sinking. I was able to feel how the teacher touched a long metal stick to my arm which I grabbed and she pulled me out. Then she yelled at me why have not I tried to swim. I will never forget this experience. After 40 years, I still can not swim.

He SHOULD see water as threatening

But not his own father! Running dangerous experiments on your child without their consent is surely at best extremely unethical. To me it sounds positively sick, or in layman terms, psychopathic.

Every generation before me was taught to swim by being tossed in a pond. It's a dangerous world. Pretending it isn't just lowers the minimum required stress before anxiety takes over.

Yes the world is a little bit more dangerous for that kid at least. At any moment his father might throw him in a lake with neither consent nor warning. I never had to worry about my parents experimenting on me and I simply learned to swim with lessons. Lucky me to have had such parents.

What makes it worse is that OP described it as an experiment that was primarily for his benefit, because he wanted to see what it would look like to see kid drowning. No word of wanting his kid to learn something (which still wouldn’t have been ok but at least barely makes a tiny bit of sense). That is mental, and child abuse.

Why add dangers, though? Even just perceived ones? It's perfectly possible to teach children to swim without giving them the experience of fearing for their lives.

It is indeed a dangerous world. A good parent equips their child with tools to mitigate those dangers -- teaching the child to swim in a gentle and supportive way, for example.

A bad parent subjects their child to an intentional near-drowning, leaving the child afraid, confused and fundamentally unequipped for the danger.

This is how it is now, and this is how it was in previous generations. I do accept that bad parenting was more prevalent in the past, but then, so was leprosy.

Coincidentally the older people who grew up that way and are proud of it are unbearable pricks

Tossing you in a pond so you'll swim is very different from tossing in a pond so you'll drown for 5 seconds.

It’s a horrible fear. When my eight year old was an infant (four months old), a second cousin (semi distant family member) drowned in a pool at a family gathering. My son’s mom and I (both former lifeguards) put him in infant swim classes immediately. Teaching him the habit of turning to breathe and finding the edge of a pool, along with simple comfort in water, served as an immense comfort. Now I’m faced with his confidence in water that can surprise even the best swimmers (oceans, rivers), so there’s one more parental fear… of course.

Every child should at least learn how to float, front crawl, and backstroke. There’s just too much water in our world to have it be a death sentence.

This was a huge worry for us too especially because we live near the ocean and many swimming pools.

We did Infant Swimming Resource [1] program for our son and I can tell you it’s tremendous! He was able to swim as a 2.5yo. He can float fully clothed.

This is the main thing they teach infants by the way. Just to stay afloat until they get help. It’s a special technique and they drill that until the infant learns. Swimming comes next if there’s a good grasp of the float technique.

Highly recommended!

Watch this demo [2].

[1] https://www.infantswim.com/

[2] https://youtu.be/rKvpPeha2sw?si=Oup3tYz83VNfq_Uc

I once took my son to a fun Waterpark for his 4th birthday. Eventually we went on a very tame slide that had a "splash pool" at the bottom. It felt safe enough to let him go, so I did, watching as he slid down. After a few seconds I went too, after losing sight of him for just a few seconds.

When I got to the bottom of the slide, he was under the water with top of his head a few cms below the top. He stood there motionless, just looking up at me. I'll never forget that look of helplessness. I picked him up and he was fine luckily.

He loves water and swimming now, no trauma or anything. Don't think the danger registered with him enough, but it did with us as parents. He went straight to swimming classes a few weeks after that.

When I was a little kid, my toddler sister fell into a pool I was in, and this was her exact reaction, she just froze up. A lot of family was nearby and one of my uncles scooped her out, but the freezing up is such a surprising response, and apparently not uncommon.

Nobody with small children should be relying on lifeguards. If they're not old enough to swim and make good decisions, they need specialized attention. It's absolutely mindblowing to me how many parents I see at the pool strap some swimmies on their young child and just let them go while they're engrossed in their phone.

As at least one other poster has mentioned, let them fall in the pool while supervised and pull them out within a few seconds. Usually they gain a healthy fear of the water from that. Then take them in with you afterwards so they can see it's fun when it's with you. Also, starting swim lessons shortly after they can walk or run is a good idea.

Well done on instilling in your son the deep-seated lesson that you are not trustworthy.

Most child abuse is committed by family and friends. Perhaps a little skepticism is healthy, rather than teaching them to have unwavering trust in authority figures. Besides, you're bound to screw up a few times anyway (e.g. walking into them when they're suddenly standing where you don't expect, bumping a head when picking them up, …). Kids are fairly forgiving.

Rather than being a father who is not abusing his child, better to abuse the child to teach a valuable lesson that family cannot be trusted? Great lesson. How about being a father who can be trusted?

> Most child abuse is committed by family and friends

Yes, a father in this case.

"rather than teaching them to have unwavering trust in authority figures."

The system would like to have a word with you.

The instinct to shame people into being nicer to kids is in a way noble, but the confidence and vehemence of this comment is misplaced.

It’s not misplaced. Putting your kid in danger without their consent just to “see what it looks like” is completely insane and a huge betrayal.

> I said no, and then she suggested I try it so that I would at least know. So I picked him up and with no warning tossed him in.

record_scratch.mp3

> So I picked him up and with no warning tossed him in. He immediately froze under water, arms and legs outstretched in literally stunned silence. I counted to 5 and pulled him out and he was trembling with fear.

WTF, why would you do that?

At that point I realized that the time it takes for a kid to drown is one breath

I don’t think this is quite true?

You can’t breathe under water, maybe inhaling some water would spur your child into action and at least try get back to the surface. I think you just scared your kid.

My child is an infant and I slowly introduce him to putting his face under the water and now his whole body, seems to have mastered breathe holding pretty well. He comes up giggling even though there was a few times he inhaled some water. Recently he jumped into the pool unexpectedly, I don’t know why he did it, but I was watching him, he just chilled and wait till I fished him out. Came out smiling. Exposure is important.

Had an incident with my daughter where we took our eyes of her for a second and she fell in the water she was playing in. This was a small pool with just us there. We jumped and got her out but it was very scary. She did baby swim lessons so she knew to hold her breath but all it takes is a little longer without noticing. All it takes is not to pay attention... And this was before phones where everywhere. Be very careful. I think Freakonomics discussed how more children are killed by pools then by guns and how important it is to have fences around pools. My wife and me have different versions of who noticed first which is also interesting, scary moments mess you up.

Supposedly babies have a reaction that causes them to hold their breath automatically. I believe it's the same response that makes them freeze up. The lessons are more about reinforcing the breath holding part while teaching them to not freeze up the rest of their body so they can swim.

I had almost the same experience with my four year old this weekend. We were in the public swimming pool and she wanted to put away her swimming ring. So I took the ring and moved it away 3 meters.

I come back and she immediately jumps into the water where she could not stand. She was under the water for marely a second but I saw the panic in her eyes and I also saw that she didn't move in the water. So I quickly went in and got her out.

Luckily we stayed in the water for an hour more after this, so she's probably not afraid of the water. But she wouldn't take off her swimming ring anymore this day.

That's not completely true, but perhaps this could be interesting to watch:

http://spotthedrowningchild.com/

This is why my wife and I started our son in swimming lessons somewhere around 1 year old. Yes, it was fun, but it's an important life and survival skill.

Being a strong swimmer doesn't mean you're invincible, but being comfortable in the water helps in so many of the situations where one might freeze, panic, or otheriwse waste energy. Comfort allows a second or two of rational thought to assess the situation and plan for an exit.

One of many things I learned from [0] is that the vast majority drownings happen in crowded pools with a ton of floaties. It’s so easy to miss a kid falling in. Those floats are supposed to keep kids safe, but they’re a lot closer to being death traps.

[0] http://spotthedrowningchild.com/

I hope you made sure he learnt that water is awesome and fun after such an experiment that no IRB or METC would ever approve.

We sent our 6 month olds for water survival training. Apparently, they can easily learn to relax in the water, turn on their back and swim to the side in like 3 months. At the end of the course they try it by doing what you did

This is why my kid started swim classes (water survival) at 2.

They can learn to swim the length of a pool, float on their back at that age.

You deliberately threw your son into the water to see what happens because a random woman told you so? Schocking. Did you ever consider how that experiment would feel to your kid?

Relax, this was commonly done in baby swimming lessons in Switzerland. Not that big of a deal

They did this to me while I was 6 or 7 and my parents sent me to swimming lessons. Instructor threw me in an olympic sized poll while I had no clue on how to swim. Took me 30 years and a private instructor to get back and actually learn to swim. Great times. :)

How is that a counterargument? "Relax, parents regularly beat their kids with sticks for centuries and they were fine.."

Every time I hear this (my dad is a firm believer, for example, not you, parent commenter), I just ask if we have the same definition of "fine," because we're talking about whether it's OK to hit a child with a stick and they've taken "pro," so I'm not sure we do.

If it's not OK to hit an adult with a stick, it's not OK to hit a child with a stick! And it boggles my mind that this requires explanation.

Maybe it’s different in Switzerland, but when I took our baby to baby swimming, it did not involve just suddenly throwing the child into the water.

Baby swimming here (Germany) included not throwing them in the water, but placing them underwater manually for a short time; basically a very short dive. This works for infants because they have a reflex where they stop breathing when water hits their face.

However, reading up on that now, the fun thing seems to be that no one can reliably tell when that reflex stops. Could be a few months, could be just a few weeks, so the recommendation is to just not do it. TIL. In any case, throwing a child in the water should just not be done. Period.

>> So I picked him up and with no warning tossed him in

Why in the hell would you do that? You just created fear of water for the rest of his life. <<Shaking my head>>

Sometimes information is valuable even when there is no ethical way to collect it.

I hope there was a long discussion after the event, though.

If you're worried about fear of water, rather than damaging the parent/child relationship, that's easily solved. Swimming lessons will do the trick.

Their kid isn’t unique. They don’t need to know how that kid reacts - it’s perfectly adequate to learn from the millions of times it has happened to other children. Does the parent need to try having his own kid run into the road as well, to find out what would happen?

Perhaps true, but I would feel much more confident in my ability to spot a drowning child if I'd seen it with my own eyes, and "child drowning videos" is a very risky google. Tossing a kid in with no warning probably isn't the way, but "learn from the millions of times it has happened to other children" is not as straightforward a process as you make it sound.

Sorry, you think it's better to drown your own child than to google it? You can just search "how to spot a drowning person" and you'll find loads of articles and videos

I would recommend this site: http://spotthedrowningchild.com/

and this article: https://slate.com/technology/2013/06/rescuing-drowning-child...

> and "child drowning videos" is a very risky google.

A bit less risky than throwing your own kid into water (and publicly telling the story), no?

Drowning is one of the depressingly common ways that young people die that somehow never gets discussed. Drowning is the leading cause of death for Americans age 1-4, and the second leading cause (after cars) for ages 5-9 and 10-14, being displaced by "accidental poisoning" (nearly 100% of which is opiate overdose) by age 15 [1]. Younger children are more likely to drown in pools; older children are more likely to drown in natural bodies of water. By age 35, the bathtub becomes the second-most common location to drown (again, probably drugs).

[1] https://wisqars.cdc.gov/lcd/

I see it get discussed all the time.

Where & how do you think it should be discussed that it isn't currently being discussed?

Here's are some NYTimes articles about it that are all pretty recent, for example.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/health/children-drowning-... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/well/family/kids-drowning... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/parenting/drowning-water-... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/well/family/drowning-chil... https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/opinion/drowning-public-p...

It's not that it doesn't get discussed. It's just the way the biases work. People don't recognize the dangers because they're used to it. They place a bigger worry on other dangers that they aren't as familiar with or feels more scary. Most people don't even think about the dangers from pools or car accidents, or overestimate how safe it is despite their lack of knowledge. Many parents put their kid in a car seat but fail to secure the child or seat according to the instructions (usually straps too loose or in the wrong location). Or they think that just because they are sitting near the pool passively watching that they could save them if something does happen despite the fact they have no training. Yet the same people will talk and worry relentlessly about a school shooting despite the stats showing that schools are one of the least likely places that children are to be shot (more likely at a private residence or in the general public, more likely in a one-off event than a mass shooting), but don't bother discussing if there are firearms in the house and if they're locked up. It all comes down to bias.

In addition, just about any municipal code for securing access to private pools demonstrates this is a well known problem.

Is that true in the States?

I'm a marine SAR volunteer in Ireland and we go into every school every year to teach about water safety (https://rnli.org/safety/float).

It's also frequently in the news, for example ahead of last year's All-Ireland semi-finals (https://afloat.ie/safety/lifeboats/item/59684-rnli-lifeboat-...).

Island nation and all, but still. The greatest risk of children to children here is in fresh water.

Swim lessons were mandatory (though nearly everyone knew how to swim beforehand) at my school in California (8th grade) and were mandatory at my son's school in Montana (he started there in 6th grade - but I believe younger grades were included).

> A thought came into my head, momentarily paralyzing me: these might be your last few minutes.

I have had this feeling twice. Both times my overwhelming thought was “Wow, I’ve been an idiot.”

The article describes how that can happen: when your enthusiasm and risk exceed your skill (or luck). Also both times I was doing something I tell my students never to do, which is be alone in the back country. Your dog is not a substitute for another human.

I've had this once, in the middle of a car accident, while things were still unfolding, and that thought was "this is going to suck".

It did, in fact, suck, though, not as much as I'd imagined I suppose. Car was totaled, I walked without a scratch, went to the ER where they handed me a scrip for 30 800mg Ibprophen and 30 Vicodin, and then told me I could call the doctor's number on the scrip if I needed more Vicodin.... I wound up just going home and taking a couple advil, went to bed, and woke up feeling like I, well, had totaled a car, took a couple more advil, and that was that.

Funny though, how, at our most vulnerable, there's an odd clarity about it, none of the day to day BS in the way, quite literally living in the moment, which may be your last.

I know what you mean, but feel important to add a clarification: your dog might well seriously expand your collective backwoods situational awareness.

This obviously depends on the characteristics of the dog, and in my case the dogs were not designer AKC fashion breed types, one has feral parents, and anyway had a preternatural awareness of things like other wild animals minutes earlier than i could.

A dog is a dog. They're more likely to draw aggro from a bear and bring it to you than warn you of the presence of another threat. This is one of the reasons that when hiking you're advised to keep your dog on a leash. My state government is pretty open about that risk.

The image of a dog MMO style Leroy pulling a bear causing you to wipe on a hike wasn't a laugh I was expecting to find on a discussion about drowning and hiking misadventures

> They're more likely to draw aggro from a bear.

Nah, bears generally don't like dealing with dogs. Although I do agree that leashing is a good idea.

Source: I live in Alaska.

OK, but I've heard a bear expert or 2 (on Youtube) say that it will increase the probability that a bear will attack you if you bring a dog with you.

Maybe, I don't claim to be an expert. But I have watched dogs tree aggressive bears with my own eyes.

Indeed in one case where I was lost in the snow my dog saved my life.

> I have had this feeling twice. Both times my overwhelming thought was "Wow, I've been an idiot."

Same experience here. I'm a beginner swimmer and got caught in a rip tide in Bali.

The thing was, it was terrifying yet so calm at the same time. Everybody on the beach continued to bathe, unaware, and a few metres away I was frantically but silently fighting for my life.

The helplessness is especially haunting. You exert this primal will to life, and the force of nature just brushes it aside.

Anyway, I made it out, spent that evening binging Youtube videos about rip tides, and have developed a healthy aversion to ocean water.

Rip currents aren't just a hazard on the ocean, for that matter. Seiches on Lake Michigan can produce both rip currents and rogue waves, and people have been killed by them.

At a beach near my place, 3 young athletic men went swimming after soccer training at a fairly elite level. Got stuck in a tidal rip on a fairly calm day. 2 died. Hard to believe.

Just once for me. Leapt into a mountain lake and it was much colder than I could’ve determined from the shore. I really wanted to stop swimming back because it was so cold.

Seemingly at the same time, I had two thoughts: first, that if I stopped, I would only get colder, and second, that if I stopped, I would most certainly never start again. Super creepy to recall.

Can I ask what specifically happened that made you think that?

One time I was in a blizzard while making camp in the back country. I had worked later than planned, checked the weather by looking out the window, and set out late. I couldn’t find a safe place to make a shelter and made a quick makeshift shelter in a tree well — not that safe under a tree but conditions seemed worse in the open. Dog and I basically huddled together all night. I didnt sleep and I doubt he did.

I have made camp in a blizzard, but never in such conditions and always with a human companion.

Second time I was on a trip with a group of friends in Atikaki park. In the almost three weeks we were out we never encountered another human. Anyway, part way through I just needed some time by myself and so after we made camp I just went off in a canoe by myself. No map — we’d emptied the canoes, but I wasn’t going to go far. No clothes but a swimsuit. But there were a lot of islands, there was some wind, and a current, and I was tired, and got lost. So I just pulled up and stayed put and luckily a couple of others came out in a canoe looking for me and found me after dark!

Me too. I was stuck underwater in a creek, tumbling end over end for multiple minutes, fighting for dear life and the only coherent thought in my head is "Fuck, I'm going to be that guy in the newspaper."

I had an almost the exact same experience, couldn't flip back up after rolling over, and first time whitewater kayaking, rocks hitting my head, etc. However, my feelings about the event afterwards were completely different. I was in a state of complete euphoria for more than a week. Watching, listening, interacting with anything brought me joy. The food tasted better, the birds flying around made me happy, anything... It was as if I took oxy or anti-depressant pills. I was just SO happy to be alive, I couldn't not shake the warm glow that I was still here.

I’ve had a different experience unfortunately. I had a completely unexpected stroke nearly two years ago (I was 38 at the time). I was extraordinarily lucky and suffered no long term effects, but for an hour and a half the entire right half of my body essentially didn’t exist. I could barely speak, and early on I was mostly just confused about what was going on.

Now sleep is very difficult for me (it was before, but now it’s significantly worse; I assume because it happened while I was sleeping) and I deal with anxiety off and on. It’s almost never anxiety “about” something, just an intense experience of dread. I fret about the fragility of life way more than is healthy. I do appreciate every day that I have, but I’m constantly aware that any moment could be my last. Or, perhaps worse, that at any moment my ability to do the things I love could be taken away, leaving me unable to speak or think clearly or ride a motorcycle or snowboard or do judo.

I wish I could let it go and just live my life. But it’s hard, even with therapy.

That sounds really tough. I guess you're saying that you suffered no long term effects to your ability to move and sense but is there a way to determine if your anxiety and emotional resilience problems are a direct result of the stroke?

Most likely it's a psychological consequence and not so much a physical/chemical consequence. I have a very, very tiny bit of permanent damage in an area of the brain related to reinforcement learning, but that shouldn't cause the effects I'm experiencing.

You might find it beneficial to do a series of drawings of natural objects (flowers, fruits, plants, stones, etc.) focusing on drawing the inner contour lines in order to convey their dimensional form to paper.

Your experience reminds me of how I felt after a situation that was more like chronic trauma, vs an acute near-death experience.

I did Teach For America it was by far the most difficult thing I've ever done. This definitely isn't true for everyone in the program, but I think my personality combined with the circumstances of my placement led to a very difficult experience for me.

Every single day, I got out of bed, tired, to go into another day of getting my ass kicked. Sunday was the worst day of my week because I had 5 days of trauma ahead of me. And honestly, I don't think "trauma" is an exaggeration of the experience of having 5 consecutive days of continuous stress overload every week for weeks on-end.

That was 14 years ago, and ever since I've felt like I'm walking on sunshine nearly every day since. Which is weird because I dealt with a lot of depression before my teaching experience.

However, I know a lot of people who experienced the opposite, with a lot of bad and lingering mental health challenges.

I have been fascinated by this phenomenon ever since listening to the Ologies podcast episode about near death experiences. What you describe is extremely common.

This is fascinating to me and I have so many questions! How do you feel about life now? Did you eventually end up feeling how you used to feel about life? Was it just a week of euphoria and then a “snap back to reality” (for lack of a better phrase) or was it gradual?

Not OP, but I've had a couple of pretty awful NDEs, and in my case, at least, while the euphoria fades after a few days to a week, each one genuinely did seem to reset my anxiety baseline to a lower level. Things that had bothered me 7/10 became 5/10, tops, and that has persisted across years. I would be very happy to have not had those experiences in the first place, but the silver lining is real.

>each one genuinely did seem to reset my anxiety baseline to a lower level

Yes! for me as well. It reminds me of a response Jack Tramiel (Founder of Commodore computers and holocaust survivor) made, when asked about dealing with the stress of cut throat competition.....something to the effect of .."stress.. what stress? Compared to Auschwitz.. this is nothing"

Damn, this is a haunting read.

I don't know why I was expecting to read that Kadin would die before she got to that part. And it's gutting, given how the author talked about their bond but also how she struggled to communicate fully with him.

Sadly, I know too many people who have drowned to death. One of my two childhood best friends died that way, and the other best friend lost his younger sister in a rafting accident, when she got caught in a strainer. Reading this makes me imagine what their last minutes may have been like. It's heavy.

I've had my own instances of realizing I was in way over my head in a situation. Not quite as bad as what the author describes. To me, her situation is one where you've crossed over to the "default dead", and I have to imagine that's a whole other level of emotion than anything I've experienced.

I searched for Kadin on the page and came to your post. I was hoping to see a romantic end to their story. But that would have been too much Mills and Boon, I guess (sigh!). TBH large part in the middle does read like that, also the author reflecting on whether she has a crush on him. A very poignant long read.

Why would your brain 'split into sadness and action' on the brink of death? Because mine would go GPU and split into multiple threads of solutions.

How many times have you been on a brink of death moment in your life? If none you have absolutely no idea how your brain will react.

When I was very young, maybe kindergarten, I was given permission to walk outside across a field to watch some kids playing ice hockey on a piece of ice (not a rink, just frozen water). This was in Ottawa, Ontario. I had to cross a ditch to get there. Water was flowing underneath and there was a thin layer of ice on top. I stepped on it and "fell" into the ditch water. It was probably under 12 inches of water, and I panicked and screamed. Luckily, one of the kids (probably grade 3 or 4) walked over and used his hockey stick to save me. I thanked him and walked one minute to my aunt's house, telling my family that I'd almost drowned. I don't remember their exact reaction but it was muted. I am almost positive I would have actually drowned if that boy hadn't decided to wander over and help me. It was over 50 years ago and I'll never forget it.

This is a powerful story.

I nearly died drowning, too. I was probably in my late 20s, on an island in the Outer Banks of NC.

The area was (and is) prone to severe riptides - a current formation that surprises swimmers by pulling them out to sea rapidly. These are very difficult to spot visually unless you know exactly what you are looking for.

I saw a boy out in the water, far deeper than he should have been for his age (maybe 8-10 yo). He seemed OK, but I knew enough to know that "drowning doesn't look like drowning." Without much thinking I just swam in after him.

Once I started out I realized quickly what was going on. I made my way to the boy. He was absolutely panicking. I told him to remain calm, and we would be OK. I am a competent but not amazingly strong swimmer - mainly I was able to give him somebody to hold onto so he could stop swimming and wasting his own energy.

We made our way back in, but I could feel the current against me. This is the nature of rip tides. Even fully aware of the phenomenon I wasted a LOT of energy swimming directly against the current. I was worried I wasn't going to make it.

Finally I managed to move far enough down the shore to escape the rip tide, and we made it back safely.

It felt so anticlimactic. The kid ran to his family. I ran to mine, and collapsed on a beach towel. My family asked if I was all right, to which I could only really answer that I was. A few minutes later the mom came by and thanked me.

But I knew the truth. My miscalculation nearly cost me my life. It didn't look like that from the shore, but if I hadn't escaped the rip tide when I did I know full well I would have panicked and drowned.

To this day, that moment sits with me, and it keeps everything in perspective.

Good job saving the kid. That's a genuinely heroic story.

> I’d never practiced rolling a kayak—the roll clinic was still on my long list of goals

Everybody has the right to enjoy outdoors activities but being out there deserves a lot of respect and I have only learned that with time and mentors. I feel nowadays there is no such such thing and most people only see pictures and likes and I see it everywhere, climbing, back country skiing or hiking.

One of the most important things you have to learn is that almost every time you put yourself in danger you are dragging others with you, either your partner, others that are sharing the space with you or a rescue team that has to fly in a helicopter.

And I say it with a couple decades of experience and almost having killed my partner because of my stupidity.

That was very well written, rarely a text can grip and wrench my heart so much, but this one did it easily.

My experience with "adventuring" and NDE are less dramatic. Once we went out on a winter hike across the mountains with friends, but we underestimated how much effort crossing in the snow would be - or overestimated our capabilities. We ended up going down to the valley, where we knew was a village instead of trying to reach the other peak with lodgings. When taking a shower by the end of the day I realized how cold I really was and that if we hadn't reached proper shelter and instead improvised one, we would have likely frozen to death. Luckily one of us insisted on carrying on even though we were exhausted and wet from the waist down by the end of it. I keep going back to this experience in my mind once in a while to marvel on how close we were to some sort of tragedy (either death or permanent injury due to frostbite).

I have nothing to say other than that this piece made me cry, and I'm grateful for it.

After I nearly drowned, I couldn't play the first level of Sonic Adventure for months. The part where the orca chases you over the dock freaked me out (I was 8)

Swimming is one of my favorite things, but it's alarmingly dangerous.

On the middle school swim team we had a day of different fun races. One was underwater swimming for distance. A girl passed out around 45 meters. She just stopped swimming and started sinking. The assistant coach jumped in and pulled her out and she came to quickly. I love underwater distance swimming, my best was around 65 meters, but every time I think of that girl.

In high school, I was a swim instructor for some elementary schooler. I was subbing for someone who was out and misjudged the group: I started them in the deep end of the pool. I asked the first kid to go and they pushed off and immediately started drowning. The lifeguard and I both immediately noticed. I just stepped in, pulled him to the wall, and moved the lesson to the shallow end. Oops.

Last year I was doing some canyon hiking and swimming. The water depth was very unpredictable based on rain fall and the submerged rough terrain. My wife spotted a man about 30 meters ahead of us who had just started drowning. I raced over and grabbed his arm. He was a very built guy and complained his muscle had cramped. He was exhausted from fighting the water and terrified. I sat next to him for a while and he held me while he recovered. No one else was around and we had only just rounded a corner to see him.

I swim a lot with my kids (6 and 8). Both can swim well and dive to the bottom of a 10 ft pool. Even still, I always watch them.

I nearly drowned in my early 30s surfing in conditions that were the biggest I had ever experienced (double to triple overhead). On the skills vs risk chart the author mentions I was low-mid skilled in a higher risk environment. I grabbed the first wave of a large set that rolled through and ended up wiping out. Somehow in the washing machine my leash lasso’d around my legs making them virtually worthless in my struggle. Imagine swimming without legs…it doesn’t work at all. The set waves behind mine were crashing over me and keeping me under. This particular storm was angled perfectly for my break and was very strong at a relatively close distance meaning set waves came in groups of up to 10 as opposed to the normal 2-3. I don’t know how long I was under. My struggle was intense. I feel like the entire time I was thinking clearly but only bc I didn’t have time to panic, maybe? Like the author I thought about my family. I remember being close to the surface once and then getting pounded again. Then an extreme calm came over my body. My vision went black and I remember thinking “this is it, it’s time”. Next thing I remember I surfaced… maybe it was right after I thought it was over, maybe I passed out for some time? Like the author I pretended to just shake it off like no big deal. I told the story like a badge of pride, showing fearlessness and strength or whatever. Never once did I say I was stupid for being out there in the first place. But I was almost that idiot that died after saying “hey y’all watch this”. I do hope my eventual death feels like the calm that came over me here though. I’ll never forget how peaceful that felt…

The whole time I read this, I kept thinking she was only underwater for 20-30 seconds, maybe a minute max, and thinking that that's doable, because I couldn't even imagine what it's like to be trapped upside-down for longer. A few minutes underwater? Without even a breath before going under? Wow.

Professional big wave surfers will train for this and many can hold their breath for ~4 minutes. No idea how long an average person can manage, but even 30 seconds under water in moderately large surf, getting tossed around and completely without any control, is a very sobering experience.

Aside from anything else, very cold water reduces the use of oxygen by your body and brain, and makes it possible to survive much longer than otherwise. I think there was a story in Gawande’s Checklist Manifesto about this property being used in an operating theatre to rescue a girl from a car accident in a Swiss lake.

Excellent writing. I was enthralled in the author's experience.

This is a fantastic article. I had my first panic attack in a church when I was 14. I was there praying with my family when I suddenly got this weird, almost unreal feeling of "super-reality". It wasn't that everything felt unreal. It was that everything felt VERY REAL. It was like waking up from the Matrix, realizing that "this is it" - this is your life and it’s definitely going to end someday. It hit me hard that death isn't just for others, my brain really got it, not just on an intellectual level but for real.

After that, I started having frequent panic attacks, along with feelings of depersonalization and derealization. It took me years of therapy, almost a decade, to return to a mindset where I could just live my life without constantly thinking about death.

Realizing you're alive can feel really, really weird. It's like waking up from a dream. You start wondering, "Why isn't everyone else panicking?" You think everyone should be in a constant state of terror about their own mortality.

It seems to me that the author of the article had a similar experience, except during an actual emergency - she suddenly understood that "One day there will be no ME."

"We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one".

Near-death experiences are what separate those that live in bloody defiance of their mortality - from those that unequivocally respect it. It's a sobering experience; but ironically, a close-call to the loss of life has also saved many. Thanks for sharing.

I wonder what happened to the friend, if that was a risk thing or something else.

Even those with no fear get scared:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vmwsg8Eabo

Moving story. Beautifully told. I distil two lessons.

1. It's worth going through a bit of awkwardness to thank people or tell them what they mean to you while you still can.

2. Never go out on the water (or more generally engage in risky activities) alone.

3. Always try out your emergency procedures.

The book "Death of a River Guide" offers quite a fascinating perspective on this

Powerful read. My Dad was the sole survivor in a boating accident in the Med when I was about 3 yrs old. He doesn't really talk about it. This has helped me understand some of what he has gone through, esp the aftermath.

amazing / sad / deeply touching story. Thanks to author for sharing!

maybe, unrelated, but I have this burning question- what was the reason for Kadin's (untimely) death and how that happened?

When I was about 8 I was walking on pond ice, fell in, swam out, walked home.

Weird reacton from him tbh.

When i draged the kayak of my step parents down the lake and set myself, i thought 'wtf how do i get out if i flip this?!'.

Apparently its a real issue and i had the right feeling about it.

I actually didn't went out because it was so snug, that i didn't trust it.

I was at summer camp when I nearly drowned at around age 11 or so, and by all accounts, it was entirely my fault.

I had discovered I could stand up at the top of the ~15' water slide and drop in by kicking my legs out from under myself for a dramatic speedup traversing the side. I did this two or three times before the lifeguard told me to knock it off. I (fingers-crossed) promised to stop, only to try my luck and tempt fate one last time, with nearly dire consequences.

I subsequently discovered that the 90 degree curve to the slide between the top of the slide before it overhung and exited into the pool was designed with a retaining lip on the sides of the slide, which was more than adequate for normal speeds and operation; I learned about conservation of motion as I cleared that lip and continued over it at speed, flying ass over teakettle over the lip.

I immediately realized too late my mistake as I launched off the slide in horror, as I was now flying dangerously fast laterally midair ~10' above the concrete poolside with just enough angular trajectory to watch myself fall in perceptive slow-motion onto the poolside, slamming my entire body onto the concrete, knocking the breath out of me while slamming my head on the immovable surface, rolling into the pool and stunning me. I remained conscious just long enough to realize I had made a terrible mistake, as I couldn't move as I sank under the surface, got tunnel vision, and blacked out as wondered about my life choices.

My last memories before blacking out were of everyone around me immediately flipping out and rushing toward me. Fade to black.

When I regained consciousness, I was laying on the bleachers on the opposite side of the pool. My camp counselor and the camp owner/administrator were there, and no one else. I have no memory of being saved, but clearly I was. I don't know if I ever stopped breathing, but it's entirely possible. I remember how pale they both were. The suddenness of entire sequence of events and the dreamless certainty of unconsciousness were quite unnerving, and I was shaken by the blow to the head and my inability to move afterward. I felt immense equanimity, strangely calm, incredibly embarrassed, and upset that I didn't feel more upset. I wanted to both stay there with them and ask them what happened and to run away and be alone. I wanted my mom and yet feared putting my mother out by calling her. We lived quite some drive away and I felt like I was wasting the money she had paid for me to go and cutting her time away from me short.

I ultimately couldn't bring myself to stay. I didn't feel safe, and I knew it was all my fault. I feared getting in trouble with my mom, and I didn't want my mom to get mad at the camp staff, since it wasn't their fault, and I was already embarrassed enough as it was. Most of all I just wanted to go home.

Years later I would get caught in a riptide off the coast of New England, and I could barely hear a different lifeguard yelling at me to come back. Without realizing it I was hundreds of feet out in the ocean. I was always a strong swimmer and competent floater, but I learned how to swim in rivers and streams; this was my first time in the ocean. I realized that I was in a rip when I was nearly spent, and had to float on my back and rest as the waves crashed over me, over and over, for what felt like minutes. It was a slog.

I finally reached the shore and nearly collapsed from exhaustion. It was the heat of the summer but I had lost a lot of body heat. Everywhere I had a scar was deep purple. I had nearly drowned a second time, and had inhaled enough water to likely be at risk of dry drowning. It was probably the most harrowing experience I've had on the water, as it happened so gradually, until I realized it was very nearly too late to return to shore.

I now have a healthy respect of all bodies of water, and a better understanding of my own limits, and a rational fear of how quickly things can all go south despite my best intentions.

Stay safe out there. Learn the signs of drowning. Watch out for each other, even strangers. The life you may save could even be your own.

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