My cousin was a lifeguard when she was a teenager. She was a strong swimmer-- she made it look effortless. She had been on a number of swim teams during her childhood. And being a lifeguard is cool, and she liked the job and she made good money for that day and age. You know, maybe $8 an hour. So my mom encouraged me to take a lifeguarding course. I have never had much success with classes/camps in physical endeavors, so I was nervous. Turns out, I had good intuition. In our first class we had to take the swimming portion of the test that we would have to do again at the end of the course in order to get the certification. I guess the idea was they wanted us weaklings to embarrass the piss out of ourselves and drop out. Well, goal achieved... except they didn’t know my mom. So starting that day for the next 10 weeks or so I had to practice swimming multiple days a week so that I wouldn’t drown when I took the final test. I didn’t drown. I swam those million laps and I tried to drown that woman pretending to drown rather than let her drown me in her panic. Success.