Did you also learn to swim by jumping into water and trying not to drown?

There was actually at some point a theory that "babies are born knowing how to swim", and on one occasion at around age three, at a holiday resort the family was staying at, I was thrown into a swimming pool by a caretaker who subscribed to this theory.

It seems that after that episode nobody could get me to feel comfortable enough in water to get any good at swimming (in spite of summer vacations by the seaside for ten years straight, under the care of my grandad who taught me how to ride a bike). I only learned the basics of swimming, mostly by myself with verbal instruction from a few others, around age 30.