What does it mean when someone says they can't swim?

I can't swim. I hate the feeling of not having something solid underneath my feet and hate getting water in my face. I could likely save my own life if I were thrown in the deep end with some form of floating/thrashing about, but I'd be very uncomfortable. acoutu: That story horrified me. I was at a pool party once and was wading in the shallow end. Some guys dragged me past the magic line that separates "hey this whole wading thing is fun" from "OH GOD DEEP END. DANGER. DEATH IS IMMINENT." They too thought it was some kind of joke that I couldn't swim. Luckily my boyfriend at the time saved me and those guys felt pretty bad when I hyperventilated for a while. The guys that threw your friend in should be beaten soundly.

GuyZero, a lot of the people on the planet do not have access to that instruction, or even enough water to apply it. My wife grew up in Beijing, where (at least back then) swimming was not something there were a lot of facilities for. Swimming in the moat around the Forbidden City, or in Kunming Lake would be, um - frowned on. If she had not moved here, where pretty much every community has a public pool, and many residence complexes have their own, she might still be a non-swimmer.

So, as a one-time swimming instructor, let me confirm what a couple of people have said: not everyone floats. It's not some wierd, rare condition. Floating isn't easy. Only half of me floats - my legs always, always sink. What I don't understand is why people wouldn't take adult lessons to learn. I mean, you don't have to be a big swimmer or anything, but it seems like a personal saftey thing at the least. Seems like knowing to swim would be more important than, say, knowing how to drive a stick shift.

People who say they can't swim should be assumed to be likely to die if they enter deep water. Any other assumption is criminally stupid. I taught my wife to swim. She had doggy-paddling, and a kind of ineffectual breast stroke, but would not have survived if dropped 100 meters offshore. Now we're teaching our daughter to swim. there's nothing instinctive about it (although I have heard that newborn babies do well in water.) Floating is not something most, if any people can do instinctively. It still takes a certain amount of conscious effort for me to float - staying on my back, keeping some air in my lungs, etc. I cannot fall asleep while floating - I'd get a load of water down my throat if I did. Please, if someone says they can't swim, believe them.

Addendum: I know the OP said, "disabilities...aside," but this is one that's not really visible -- so I feel it's rather pertinent. I mean, nobody argues with somebody in a wheelchair when they say they can't swim, but I always get the "sure you can, don't be so timid!"...when the truth is I'm no better at it than somebody who has no use of their legs. Your lungs are pretty important in the water. You never know exactly why somebody says they can't swim. Just take it at face value that they can't.

When I say I "can't swim," I mean that rather literally -- I sink like a stone. I could swim some when I was younger, though... I have a restrictive chest-wall condition wherein the cartilage surrounding my sternum fused with bone at an early age -- resulting not only in a total lack of elasticity in my ribcage (try breathing without moving your chest at all), but also in my upper ribcage not properly scaling with me as I grew up. Thankfully, you wouldn't know it to look at me, as I am naturally of slight build and otherwise fairly healthy. Still, after fully growing into the condition, I only have about 16-18% of normal lung capacity due to the restriction. Most sustained exercise is out of the picture. Not only can I not swim, but if I was being chased by a starving lion across the African savannah, I would make a rather expedient and tasty morsel. With regards to swimming specifically, I simply can't intake enough air to achieve buoyancy. Aditionally, I can't hold my breath for more than about 15 seconds. Deep water for me is drowning. When I say I can't swim, people had better listen. Unfortunately, they never do. Just about a month ago, in fact, I had people threatening to throw me in at a BBQ.

I'm unlucky enough to have a body which is denser than water, which I'm told is pretty unusual, though I can't be the only one. Wow. People kept telling me to "just do nothing and float" when they tried to teach me how to swim. That just didn't work for me. I figured that my body must for some obscure reason lack the ability to float in water. Now I know it's true. Thanks!

People who really can't swim are basically vertical in the water. The classic sign of drowning is the "climbing the ladder" approach non-swimmers use to try and extricate themselves from the water. Basically the body remains vertical and the arms move up and down, with lots of splashing and little forward momentum. Eventually they would suck in too much water, tire, and drown. In lifeguard training, they train you to rescue people flailing in a vertical posture. To demonstrate this principle, take a puppy that has never learned how to swim to a swimming hole with some labrador retrievers swimming. Then throw the puppy in the water about 3 feet from the shore (prepare to rescue him!) and compare the swimming techniques. In my case, the non-swimmer pug puppy was essentially vertical with paws clawing up and down with a lot of useless splashing, while the labs lean forward and mellowly doggy paddle the arms in mellow forward circles under the water. The pug made it out without rescue but he despises swimming.

There is a lot of stuff going on at once when you find yourself in the water. In no particular order, you have to: -not freak out, -know when to breathe and when not to inhale water, -float without doing much, -manage to keep yourself up if you can't float, -propel yourself in a specific direction. My parents started me in swimming classes (at the YMCA) when I was 6 months old. My understanding was that we started out by covering the first two tasks, which are mostly instinctive (freaking out and breathing). Then we moved on to floating - which takes a lot of skill to do properly. After that, we started in on the actual "swimming." Of course, I spent the rest of my formative years doing all that - I would not expect an adult to pick much up in only a few classes. I think that everybody should at least take a few classes to gain some confidence, and all children should start learning at a young age.