Yeah so one of the weird things is that you can't yell when you're drowning. It's not something I'd expect if I didn't know better, I'd expect to at least be ab

Yeah so one of the weird things is that you can't yell when you're drowning. It's not something I'd expect if I didn't know better, I'd expect to at least be able to get some shouts and screams off but it's not actually like that. In fact I was once swimming with the son of my dad's best friend in his teens, we'd only seen each other once before as our parents lived in different countries after they married. And somehow he went deep into the sea, and at some point I looked back and saw him flapping about. I must've been 15 or so at the time but somehow even though he didn't yell or scream, and even though we'd been pretty far from the beach for like a solid 5-10 minutes (giving me the impression he had no problem swimming), I got the impression he was drowning. I'm glad I responded, but looking back it felt awkward and it wasn't a clear cut situation where you feel this heroic impulse. I didn't know him very well, he was 2-3 years older than me and bigger, and he didn't indicate to me he had issues swimming, maybe he was just playing around (just like my gf likes to lay in pools face down for like a minute at a time, which looks way more suspicious of drowning!), I really didn't want to go up to him and hold him and find out he was totally fine, it'd just be really embarrassing, as if some kid a few years younger has to rescue him at sea. Either way despite him not yelling or anything, I did swim over and grabbed him and he started pushing me down violently as if I was a floatation device, so from there it was pretty clear, and we slowly made it back to the beach and he kept thanking me for years after everytime I see him. I tried to use the rescue techniques I'd learned as a child, to have someone float on your chest basically but that totally failed in the moment and I couldn't create a moment of control to calm him down and instruct him, I just did my best to swim up and to the beach. He basically pushed me down every other second, and then I'd swim up and catch a breather as best as possible, and somehow we made it back like that. Totally exhausted and out of breath right after, can't imagine how he must've felt.