I couldn't swim either before I enlisted. The monkey bars on the
SOC course was also completely alien to me, come to think of it.
Poor familial background, mah. Couldn't afford to play anything
except with marbles when growing up ~lol~
But don't worry; it'll be like learning to walk. Also, keep in mind
that it's very acceptable to be able to swim & yet have a
phobia of water, like the CDO guy who drowned recently. The
training should be quite systematic in BMT (basically treading
water, then mostly learning the breast-stroke technique.) Dunno how
tight the timetable is nowadays, but in my time we non-swimmers had
to attend extra night classes & also burn a long weekend or
two. But there's a plus side, in that you can usually watch your
fellow swimmer recruits kena tekan banyak on the pool deck (circuit
trainings)!
But, at some point, you'll be ordered to jump into the deep pool
& swim the requisite length (whatisit, 50m?). It'll really be a
personal test of will on your part then. Just focus on your strokes
& resist all temptation to panic. They'll probably let you swim
next to the pool edge, to gain initial confidence. The journey of a
thousand miles begin with one single step, etc.
You know, I almost drowned in BMT too. Some stupid PTI was angry at
somebody else &, next thing I knew, kicked the next detail man
(me) into the deep pool. Of course, I went down like a rock ;-( But
I also learnt from that incident, in remembering the underwater
sensations & keeping faith with my rescuer once he got a hold
on me.
Frankly, most of us managed to swim one complete length .... in the
test itself. Thus we passed. I never swam again the rest of NS,
always quietly volunteering to do guard duty or something whenever
I saw the training programme. My unit treated it as a "fun" PT
activity BTW, with minimum tekan except I didn't fancy swimming in
No.4s or trying the front-crawl stroke (something I still can't do
today). But breast-stroke, definitely no problem anymore, even
though the water phobia is still there.
I just realised I couldn't spell b-r-e-a-s-t stroke here ~lol~
