Where did you learn to swim

My little brother taught me (all wrong, of course - heads up free) when I was 16. It took me a whole year to learn the legal kick in breaststroke and I expect to be a backstroker any year now.......... Meanwhile, I had broken my first Canadian record within seven months of learning - butterfly, of course. My coach and I learned it together, out of a magazine called "The Swimming Times". I guess I'm a "natural" flyer, but none of the others are easy. I could be a distance freestyler, but I'm way too lazy to train for that........... ;)

I grew up on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia. Water, water, everywhere... need I say more? As they should have, my parents insisted that I learn to swim... lessons at the local pool... and after that swimming in college

Dennis, The same thing is true of me! My mother couldn't -- still can't -- swim a stroke, and so she made sure my brother and I took swimming lessons. We started out in someone's backyard pool. I think these were YMCA lessons, because the levels were minnows, guppies, etc. Then when I was 9 or 10 we joined West Meade Swim Club (Nashville, Tenn.), whose incomparable manager was Mary Lee Watson. That's where I really learned how to do the strokes correctly, and was eventually recruited for the swim team. So I owe it all to Mary Lee! The ironic thing is that my mother still can't swim, yet she comes to the meet I'm in charge of every year and times. She said she never dreamed when she got me involved in swimming as a child that she would have a 46-year-old daughter and she would STILL be working at her swim meets!

I learned to swim at Wilson High School in Long Beach, CA. It was a Red Cross program and I was about 7 years old. I don't have any "evidence" that I took lessons beyond the beginner level but I did join the Pacific Coast Club swim team (where my brother was already a member) a year or so later. I went on to be a swim instructor for many years - always in a Red Cross program. The ARC taught the "trudgeon crawl" which is what I think Cynthia is referring to. I see people doing it during lap swim all the time. And I still do the elementary backstroke - it's quite relaxing. Sally

I grew up near the Delaware River in Trenton NJ and my mother took me to swim in the summers. She never gave me a lesson, just dogpaddled against the current. Never had a lesson in my life, read books, watched the better swimmers and copied them. Didn't swim laps until after I graduated from HS.

I grew up across the street from the Clackamas river and spent everyday when not in school (summers) at the river with all my friends. Had to learn to swim on my own and my goal was to be able to swim across the river without the current carrying me all the way downstream. In the afternoon they used to let out the dam upstream and it got really swift so it made the challenge all the more interesting. I learned and haven't stopped yet. Only difference was that river in the spring was mighty cold and it took along time to get in and get used to it. I used to train in it with sweatshirt, gloves and shoes when in high school, where I started competive swimming. Now the pool is 79 to 81. Much better temp than the river but I wouldn't trade those days for anything. It was great.

wow! you guys are elite swimmers! ;) You're fortunate that you have had proper training... I'm self-taught (I had a friend help me once, when I was ten) and it shows! I taught myself by watching other swimmers but now get tips from my masters coach... peace...

I learned how to swim because my mother doesn't know how...she made sure all of her kids were going to be able to swim. I hated swimming as a child and cried everyday during lessons. Now I can't get it out of my life. It has paid for my college education, it was my profession for a decade, and now it keeps me from being 300 lbs. I love it....

My father had been a lifeguard as a teenager and had determined early on that his children would have at least some skills against drowning. The summer of my sixth year found me in my small-town community pool with several other kids my age all learning to float, dive, flip, tread water and swim. Floaties were prohibited in that class, and to this day I cringe when I see kids using them instead of learning to swim for real. My swim instructor was very good and was loved by all the kids. She managed the local pool as long as I could remember. We always used to ask her why she wasn't married and didn't have a boyfriend. She would always awkwardly evade the question, and if any parents were around we would be immediately shushed and told not to be rude. We would catch bits of hushed conversations from the parents, but in our innocence we didn't know what a *** was and usually didn't even realize they were talking about our teacher. Not that it made any difference at all, but it's one of those things you suddenly remember twenty years later and say, "Oo-oh! Okay, nooow I get it." Another weird memory of that deep-south pool was that black people were not allowed in there. The pool was restricted to residents of the city. No black people lived in the city limits, because no one would sell or rent housing to them. Once, when a black family moved just inside the city line, the city redrew its map to un-annex that property. Eventually a black family bought a house too far inside the city limits to draw around, and they had to prove they lived inside the city legitimately before they could use the pool (whereas the white kids just paid for the pass and got in with no trouble). A few white families refused to use the pool after that. The children were actually protected in some measure from this bigotry. For years I and all the other kids just thought black people couldn't swim (or just preferred to splash around in the river nearby), just like we all believed that our teacher just hadn't ever found the right boyfriend. That teacher took me and a handful of others and made a team. We sucked and lost continually. Interest in a swim team waned in the community, so I had to go to a "swim and tennis club" across town, where the coach had once been a world-class flyer who had been just a hair too slow for the Olympic team. That's where I really learned some technique and picked up some speed. I continued swimming until my early teenage years, when I got beaten up by an older kid at a swim meet. So I gave up swimming in favor of martial arts. It was fifteen years before I came back to the water. Now I'm glad I learned to take a beating, because I need that training to be able to swim at my current pool.

Well, I'm not an elite swimmer by masters standards. Red Cross learning to swim has been available in most large metro areas for over 40 years. I don't know if you were unaware of it as a child or you came from a rural area where it wasn't available. But I learned to swim in the 1960's and they taught you strokes that are no longer use such as the Triegon and the elementary backstroke. I had to go to a private swim school in order to learn the Butterfly. Butterfly was separated from breaststroke back in the 1950's and not all learn to swim programs taught it in the 1960's.