Can you swim?
Just curious because I love to swim but there are so many people who can’t swim at all.
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
59 Answers
A little but not well. I have to hold my nose shut with my hand when I put my face underwater.
I’m one of those people who can’t swim at all. Never been to a swimming pool in my life.
Yes. I was taught to swim after I drowned as a child. As an adult, I had remarkably powerful skills.
I learned to swim in classes as a child. But I don’t know how long I could swim, so it might not save my life if needed.
Yes, I can float after 3 days under water.
Yes. And every summer i spent about 90% of my time at the town pool.
And during my college years I earned my Red Cross Lifesaving Certification which came in handy for summer jobs.
Technically, yes. Not well, not for long, and I don’t enjoy it.
I’ll wade with the rest of the tourists, thanks.
Yes. Like a WeekiWachee mermaid. I was magic in the water.
@Mariah there is a trick to it. Keep internal air pressure against your nose, like you would if you were blowing your nose. You don’t push hard because you don’t want to let the air escape (unless you are a WeekiWachee Mermaid rising from the depths of the ocean and bubbles happen to go along with that act.) Just keep a bit of pressure on so air can’t get in your nose. Just takes practice till you do it without thinking.
So sorry you drowned @filmfann. Dang it man!
Oh, you know what…I forgot. I also have a “flap” in my nose, at the back, that I can close at will. It came in useful for swimming and for changing nasty diapers…and other circumstances when I don’t want to smell that smell. I have to ask Rarebear what that is, does everyone have one, and why can some people control and others can’t…or don’t know that they can. BRB. He’ll probably tell me I’m abnormal and I have mutant frog genes stuck in my DNA somewhere.
I think it’s because you are part lizard.
Shit.
Look, you guys…hold your breath! If I’m right, then not only do you convulse your diagram, but you slam shut that flap in your nose right at the point where it leaves the skull. Now try it, feel it. Do you feel it?
Yes, my dad taught me how to swim in a pool when I was little, then I took swimming lessons when I was a little older. We live near the ocean, so it’s a must to know how to swim here.
@Dutchess_III – Do you mean sealing off your soft pallette with your tongue?
I think teaching a kid to swim is one of the most important skills you can teach them, ocean or not. Kids drown in pools, rivers and ponds too.
No @Seek, but that can be part of it especially if you’re holding all your breath. However, I can seal it without my tongue and therefore I can still breath through my mouth….I can even still stick my tongue out (as I’m self-testing and Rick is shaking his head, thinking I’ve drankeded too much beer.) I think, maybe, when you take a drink of something that flap closes.
It’s hard to explain. It’s just something I’ve done since I decided on a career as a mermaid, when I was 5.
I know how, but I don’t enjoy it. I have a swimming pool in my back yard, which I rarely use. When my son was growing up, he needed the pool for his ADHD, and now his sons use it regularly
@Dutchess_III It sounds convenient. I can pop my ears without holding my nose. That’s my superpower.
Actually I have all three ear related Stupid Human Tricks. I can also flex my tensor tympani muscle, which sounds like thunder inside my ears and only I can hear it, and I can wiggle my ears as well.
Damn it! I spit beer through my nose, @Seek!
Yup, I’ve swum over a mile when I was a teenager, “Drown proofed” I can tread water for two hours by bouncing up and down in the water.
Although I remember taking swimming classes at the Y when I was a kid, the most I will cop to is “I can not drown”.
I can do the Vulcan salute with my toes.
I can swim, too.
Gosh, as a kid, at the public pool, which was an Olympic sized pool, I challenged my self to crawl along one of the black line at the bottom of the pool…they used the pool for high school swim meets, and the black lines delineated the lanes. So I did. To get to the bottom, and hang out there, you have to empty your lungs of some air, so you’ll sink.
I alligator crawled along that line, on half air,even when it dropped off the shelf to the deep end, at which point I had to let out more air, to about half way along the bottom of the deep end before I gave it up and used the last of my air to get to the top. Popped up gasping and proud.
We regularly threw small shit that would sink in to the deep end of the pool, and we’d have to do rescue dives for it….when the life guards weren’t looking.
I easily mastered swimming the length of the pool from one end to the other, lengthwise, on one breath. But…I’d been practicing holding my breath since I was 5 because…you know.
You asked about something I am close to. Yes I am amazed when I run/swim into people who can’t swim or are afraid to swim…I am humbled by the time I was 6 and dragged out of the pool by a life guard who saved my sorry ass from drowning. I spent years in swim lessons and on the swim team and even at 56 yrs old can still swim a mile. That day of almost drowning is what possessed me to swim a couple hundred thousand laps in the pool back then and still do.
*stands in a corner on my own and pouts. *
Yes, I can.
My father could not and he spent about 15 years at sea aboard various vessels.
Yes. Big fan of swimming. Was a junior life guard when I was 17/18 years old.
I taught myself to swim at age 7. I’ve competed in many triathlons in which swimming was my strongest event. I feel completely relaxed in the water while swimming long distances. If I get tired while swimming in open water a long way from land I just roll over onto my back and take a rest break. It’s so sad that some people drown when all they have to do is just relax and float on their back or do the dog paddle.
I can. I’m great at backstroke, not so great at front crawl, but I can get by. I can do breast stroke too.
Yes. I’m somewhat well padded, especially at the front so I float rather well. I can swim adequately enough not to drown but I don’t know any strokes apart from breaststroke. I don’t really like the thought of going swimming but once I am in the water I quite like it
@Dutchess_III I can do the flappy soft palette thing too. Twin lizards!
Had two different neighbors who had pools when I was growing up in Southern California, everyone in the neighborhood could swim.
I body-surfed a lot when in Northern California for school and working in Silicon Valley. That’s the most challenging swimming I have done. Storm surf is super for body-surfing but is tough to get through to the wave break.
I like snorkeling and will free-dive to take a closer look at stuff below.
LIZARDS AREN’T AMPHIBIOUS, @Rarebear! Except for the Galapagos lizards and I am not a Galapagos lizard. ..... Or…. maybe I am. Maybe I’m an immortal Galapagos lizard time traveler….
I don’t understand parents sending their kids to swimming lessons. I learned to swim when I was 4. I remember starting to drown in a hotel pool. Dad pulled me out, and within 10 minutes I knew how to swim.
I taught my kids, and several of my grandkids, how to swim at the age of 2. It just takes a few minutes, really, and it’s so much fun and there is so much positive interaction. Why swim lessons?
dabbler, a boyfriend in New Zealand was trying to teach me body surfing in a storm swell. It was a bit much on my first go. All I ended up with was a swim bottoms full of sand. When we got back to the motel, the clerk said, ‘It’s nice seeing people back in the water after last week.’ We asked, nervously, ‘What happened last week?’ ‘Oh, someone got bit by a shark. There was an ambulance and a lot of drama, but it wasn’t that serious.’ wow
No but lizard is funnier than amphibian.
I just asked my dentist about this. He thinks I’m SPECIAL! And he doesn’t call me a lizard. Sniff.
You’re “special” all right.
I’m just happy to learn that Queen Elizabeth is on Fluther.
Thanks for outing yourself Dutchess, I mean Queen!
I just didn’t want to intimate y’all more than I already do, @Call_Me_Jay.
I do believe the dog’s name was your idea, Mr Mattson, way back. And better a lizard than a duck.
IT’S THE EPIGLOTTIS! I bet you don’t even know what that is, “Doc.” I bet you have NO control over your epiglottis, either.
Ululating lizards have fine control of their epiglottises
…they….they do? What about uvulating lizards? Ovulating lizards? What about them?
Ululating lizards in Ouray Utah enjoy eating ebelskivers.
True story.
@Dutchess_III – Come take a vacation to Florida. We’ll take you to Weekie Watchee to see the Mermaids and you can teach my kid to swim. Haha
Your Florida kid can’t swim? I will be presumptuous and say you have two tasks this summer – the school thing and floating the young’n.
Yes, presumptuous I have no idea about your other responsibilities and demands on your time. Regardless, all the best.
Nope, he can’t yet. We’re pasty pale Irish-descended Northerners who happen to live in Florida, and we don’t have access to a pool. ::shrug::
@Seek I’m gonna guess there’s some Viking blood in your kid. And some Led Zep appreciation.
To the sea!
Seek just have him swim in one of those Florida swamp thing places. It’s not like there are Reptiles or anything. Right Dutch?
@Seek I lived in Florida until I was 7. I’ve seen the Weekie Watchee mermaids….that’s where I discovered my obsession!
We had a canal behind our house in Florida. It came off of Tampa Bay. Years later Mom told me the only thing she ever worried about were alligators! I had NO IDEA I was supposed to be looking out for Alligators!! Only jellyfish.
Plus never mind that my little sisters couldn’t swim, and we had that canal in our back yard. Alligators. Smh.
Also nevermind that alligators live in the lakes and rivers way more than the Bay.
Sharks love those canals though.
Well mom said the occasional alligator would show up on neighbor’s lawns. I remember there was some island out in the middle of the bay. My friend and I got the idea to row out there in a row boat. No life jackets. Mom packed a lunch for us. I was about 7, she was 8. We got there, but were too scared to actually step out onto the island. I mean, there is no telling what was there, and all of it deadly!
Ah, the good old days when our parents didn’t seem to care if we lived or died. “Here! Strap on these skates! and race as fast as you can up and down the broken sidewalk!
Answer this question 
