The summer that I graduated from high school, I took a life saving class at the local lake. At the completion of the class, I had to take a test to insure that I could indeed preform all of the requirements of the life saving program. And one of the requirements was to save a swimmer in distress.

Now, since there weren’t any swimmers in distress at the time, a volunteer was needed. In my particular case, the volunteer was girl my age whom I personally knew and who had taken the class the year before.

She swam out into deep water and hollered for help. I, in turn, ran into the water and then started swimming out to her.

Now when you are dealing with a drowning person, you can’t let them get a hold of you. If you do, they will take you down with them. So, just before you get to them, you dive under the water and rotate them by their knee so that you are behind them. Then, while hanging on to their waist with one hand, you put your arm around their neck under their chin. Next, you release their waist and begin swimming to shore with your free hand while dragging the victim behind you.

In theory, this approach should work. But, unfortunately, my pretend victim knew what to expect and she was feeling up to a little fun at my expense.

As I dove under the water to rotate her, she too dove under the water. (A real drowning victim would never do something like that because they are interested in getting out of the water and not under the water.) And because the water was murky, I couldn’t actually see her knees, I had to guess where her knees should be. And, because she dove at the same time that I did, her knees were not where they should have been. So, instead of grabbing her knees, I grabbed her boobs.

Well, I was quite tired since this was the last event of the test and not really in any mood for her antics. So, I rotated her by her boobs instead of her knees and I found that in a situation like this, the boobs work just as well as the knees.

Now, since I had reoriented my self with my victim and since we were both still under the water, I just put my arm around her neck under her chin and we both came up out of the water together. And I began swimming to shore with my victim in tow.

Usually, at this point in time, the victim may still be struggling. And if the victim struggles too much, you are supposed to momentarily rotate them face down in the water.

In the case of my victim, I was way too tired to put up with her games. So, when she started struggling, I simply hooked my fingers under the strap of her two piece bathing suit top. Knowing that in an instant I could expose parts of her that have never been seen by mortal man, she stopped her struggling and fully co-operated.

I passed the class and that was the last time that I went swimming.