If one never has a chance to try, he must assume that he can't do it.

 

i guess the question is are you looking to swim as in freestyle stroke or simply keep your head above the water (which by the way could be loaded with sharks that must be killed - but that's another thread).

 

Hence why i shit myself in really deep water. If I could post a picture of a shark aka swimming teeth right now i would, but I cant cos Im not a member.

 

My dad can't swim. He's in his 60's and will likely never learn, because he doesn't care. As a kid they only ever had the "crick" (creek) to splash around in, and he's never been a tropical vacationer.

In a dire situation I suspect you'd survive without knowledge of how to swim because you know people kick their feet and use their hands as paddles. I'm a pretty weak swimmer and have found myself in the middle of very deep lakes (200'+) without a boat, life jacket, or floatie twice in the last 2 years. This summer we were boating back to mainland from an island in the middle of the night, and i decided to climb up the ski tower while we were doing about 30mph. I slipped and fell in the water and the boat kept on going. Fortunately when I fell in I went way down, and the boats following us didn't slice me up. When I surfaced the boats were waaaaaay gone and I had to tread water for about 10 minutes until they found me in the darkness without a flashlight.

Last year I was swimming behind our houseboat and someone else started it and took off. That was a 15-20 minute affair of me swimming to the closest floating device a couple thousand feet away.

I'm weak, and I survived. With minimal education you'll be just fine and won't have to feel embarrassed about not being able to swim.

 

Oh sure you can

 

Sure you can swim with sharks...they simply arent interested in humans....baahahahahaha! Good work dude...thats exactly the picture i was thinking of

 

My advice would be to learn how to float in shallow water, then once you have that down learn how to move your arms to propell you through the water.

 

i can't swim. can barely tread water.
just like some peopole suck at driving, some suck at swimming.

 

Being able to swim is a natural thing, you just need to get the right steps down. Like I said learn how your body floats in the water and you can learn how to keep yourself up and tread water. If you cant learn your making it harder than it is.

 

i can only hold my breath a minute at a time.