it?
Did the boy do this intentionally? Did he go unconscious when entering the pool? Was he trying to stay under as long as he could? Why was he not moving at all on the way in?
<- Down-mods for relevant questions.
Did the boy do this intentionally? Did he go unconscious when entering the pool? Was he trying to stay under as long as he could? Why was he not moving at all on the way in?
<- Down-mods for relevant questions.
He entered the pool, face to the stairs, hands on the rails, continued to climb until the ladder ended (with his head already under water), released the rails, and sank, vertically, until the bottom. It was not a very deep pool, maybe 1.70m or so. He seemed to stand there, as if trying to see how long he could keep his breath. And when he shifted out of the upright position it became obvious that he was in trouble. A man standing next grabbed him, pulled him up, saw the boy was unconscious, started to shout for help and within seconds the boy was out of the pool and the lifeguards took over.
It's just an interesting situation to think about, because how would you know? And, why wouldn't someone come up? Obviously he became unconscious at some point, but was it due to not being able to breathe? Or did something else happen to him as he was entering the water (eg. aneuyrsm, heart failure, etc). It's hard to believe it could have been an intentional act of the kid (suicide at 6? probably not very common) or that he would go into that part of the pool in the way you described without knowing how to swim.
A child who doesn't know how to swim but is copying what they see others doing might be breathing as normal, have exhaled recently, and when they release the handles/ladder and enter the pool begin to sink. Not knowing how to swim and now head-under-water they are unable to get air into their lungs to have any amount of buoyancy.
Depends on a number of factors -- body composition (fat is less dense), how much air you have in your lungs (did you inhale or exhale before entering the water), etc.
Besides, the story wasn't about a generic child, but a "small boy, maybe 6 or 7 years old" and was referred to with "his", "he", etc. multiple times.
We often use neuter (gender-neutral) pronouns in English, just not this one. I've heard native English speakers say things like "If a mother wants to use the nursing room, they can just key in the code in their pamphlet". There are definitely restrictions on using 'gender-neutral they' but this kind of usage is totally normal.
Which is a great sentence, because semantically the pronoun referent is obligatorily female and singular. And yet, we use 'they' in this context. Which shows (among other things) that syntactic requirements can be relatively divorced from semantics. C'mon, that's pretty cool, right?
My two cents.
As someone who speaks other languages, I know there's a point where it's hard to make progress because you are fluent enough to be understood easily and yet you make significant mistakes that nobody will bother to correct unless you ask.
Some people speak more than one language.
> it was such a pure horror
> a happy end
> it did not wave the arms
> made no swimming movements with the legs
> a dozen of pools and slides
> 7 boys in that age
> not loose them
None of these are a big deal, though, and the writing was perfectly understandable.
The drowning did not wave the arms?