To my mom’s horror, my dad taught me and my siblings how to exhale and sink to the bottom of the pool (oddly, my lifeguarding instructor taught us the same thing more extensively a decade later). It made the waterline a much less binary proposition: I know what it feels like to be running out of air, I know how much…

Oh god, I would never even have found Bronson’s thumbs, too much muscle and arm hair. Nope, our guy told us to find his elbows, let out all of our breath and push upward hard so you go shooting down - they’re trying to get above you so there’s not usually any resistance, the lock is from above. He also taught us to go…

A marine vet in one of my classes taught us how to essentially sink to the bottom, then grab standing people by the ankles and corkscrew them while dragging them underwater. He was lightning-quick, he did it to me a lot.

Good luck with the rescue diving! And yes, you do not forget that feeling of panic. One part of you is thinking “this is a drill, he’d stop before I actually died...” but your lizard brain is going insane because you can’t really talk yourself out of the conviction that another human is about to kill you.

So this asshole was in the theater with his phone out taking pictures? He’s worse than the spoiler.

Seriously I hate those fucking water wings. People need to get life vests if anything, and of course proper swimming lessons!

Honestly it’s scary the number of people I knew in school and know now that never received proper swimming lessons as kids. I get it that my state has basically no water at all, but it’s so alarming.

Oh man I’m glad to hear your story ended differently than mine.

As a long time lifeguard for a major theme park chain in the US, I cannot tell you how many times a guest would walk by me on their way up the line and say “You’re going to have to come get me, I can’t swim.” before scampering up the line to the top of a water slide. Um...WHAT?

This was one of the most shocking things I learned when I did lifeguard training (at 40). I had no idea that you could drown “quietly”. One of the things that we were taught was to look for swimmers whose body position is vertical in the water, a sign that they are laboring. Also? If your child does have an episode…

Was a lifeguard and recently became a rescue diver. They repeated the training where the person ‘attacks’ you. Even with all the training, there’s a moment of panic when they bear hug you/ try to climb on top of you.  

When I was about 9-10 years old (30 now), I remember I drifted to a part of the pool that suddenly dipped about 2 feet with no indication, and put me firmly in “whoa I may go under” territory. I remember calling to a couple of older people for help nearby and said I might drown and they just started laughing at me.

On a related note: NEVER COME INTO SHORE TO ‘JUST DROP MY FRIEND OFF’ AT A PUBLIC BEACH!

I missed the last one. Was feeling pretty smug about my skills until that, I thought it was going to be the kid tucked under the lip of the pool on the edge of the deep end.

Well this is a TERRIBLY dramatic reaction.

Here is a great article about drownings-

Bit more of an explanation from a longer article by someone who is at the forefront of marine safety.

Yeah, it’s scary...generally if someone looks like they’re drowning, they probably aren’t. just like if it sounds like someone is choking, they’re probably not.

I worked as a lifeguard for a while and I will say that many people vastly overestimate their ability to swim. I worked on a lake and we had a raft outside the normal swimming area, we’d tell people they had to be able to swim out there to use it. A lot of people would say they were good swimmers and then we’d have to…

All of the presented examples are children...do you think children deserve the Darwin Award or that their parents deserve to lose their child to drowning? Be better.

I spent high school and college working as a lifeguard and had to go in after multiple people — including adults — but most were children who had drifted…