You Know What Really Grinds My Gears? Now with 3x more gears...

[Cube Inmate]

I failed yellow somehow, twice. Wouldn't put my face under or something like that. I effin hate chlorine pools!

[81MC]

I was ridiculously shy around girls. Mom took me for swimming lessons once, it was all girls so I refused to go in the water, making my mom pull me out of class. Kind of funny, kind of a bummer because I was too young to know that I was old enough that I wouldn’t get that time with her back.

[DownInFlames]

Originally Posted by Cube Inmate

I failed yellow somehow, twice. Wouldn't put my face under or something like that. I effin hate chlorine pools!

I aced yellow. Probably because I was like 12 years old and the rest of the kids were toddlers.

[FlamesAddiction]

Youtubers teaching foreign students how to get free food in Canada by abusing the food banks. It seems to me that if you are wealthy enough to be able to have the luxury to go to a foreign country for school, you should be wealthy enough to support yourself while doing it. If not, you shouldn't be doing it.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...nts-food-banks

A growing genre of videos on YouTube and TikTok is angering some Canadians who say international students are being encouraged to abuse food banks in order to get “free groceries.”

“Very few people in Canada know that you can claim free food hampers,” begins an almost 10-minute long YouTube video that was posted in June this year. “Students face a lot of financial problems, especially during this time when there are very few jobs available and if you are new to Canada, it’s very difficult to survive on limited finances. During this time, you can take advantage of free groceries, free food hampers. In this video, I am going to collect a free food hamper and I’ll show you what’s inside and how you can claim it too.”

The YouTuber adds that since moving to Canada he has claimed the ‘free hamper’ twice, the second time for the sake of making the video so that he could inform others about the same.
----
Another video posted in May follows a similar narrative of “how you can save money on groceries in Canada.” The video follows the YouTuber as he makes his way to a Salvation Army food bank with a friend who also volunteers at the location. “Not just students, I have seen even Canadians come here to get free food. There is no shame,” he notes before entering the building.

[Barnet Flame]

Originally Posted by timun

'Member when the Red Cross used to run swimming lessons and would give out colour badges for the levels achieved?



I 'member...

I got to Green - Junior

Originally Posted by darockwilder

I thought I eventually got one with a big "S" on it for survival or something too

Those are the set of badges I went through as well. The badges in the photo are the new fangled modern ones.

I was old school - even with Participaction where the ‘Award of Excellence’ (which I didn’t get) had a rectangular top with bronze, silver and gold maple leafs above the circular thingy.

[bizaro86]

I had done the colours up to green when Red Cross changed from colours to numbers. I had failed gray by one thing on my last set (gray and then white were the last two colours) but green only mapped to level 8 of the new program, so I would have had to do 9, 10, 11 and 12 to finish. Which I thought was bogus so I refused to do anymore lessons.

[Locke]

Red and Maroon are the real winners.

Oh the days...

[Fuzz]

I always loved how the badges looked like someone being swept out to sea, and no one was coming to rescue them.

[Ashartus]

Originally Posted by Kidder

Failed red three times. Finally passed.

Failed maroon three times. Gave up.

Big water was out to milk me dry. Big conspiracy. Everyone knows it.

I remember passing red, then moving up to maroon, the instructor sending me back down to red and failing red. The next year I just skipped up to blue and passed.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

Youtubers teaching foreign students how to get free food in Canada by abusing the food banks. It seems to me that if you are wealthy enough to be able to have the luxury to go to a foreign country for school, you should be wealthy enough to support yourself while doing it. If not, you shouldn't be doing it.

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...nts-food-banks

I don’t know about this. I shared accommodations with foreign students working on graduate degrees. None of them were close to wealthy.

[calumniate]

Originally Posted by Kidder

Failed red three times. Finally passed.

Failed maroon three times. Gave up.

Big water was out to milk me dry. Big conspiracy. Everyone knows it.

I failed maroon three times as well. I had no body fat at all.. the treading water drills made me look pretty hopeless

[sleepingmoose]

Back then you actually could 'fail'. Nowadays, no one is checking to see if you actually have the prerequisite for lessons. My kid was in a Swimmer 5 class (probably equivalent to blue or green), and one kid couldn't even swim one length of the pool without needing to be "rescued" by the instructor.

Turns out her parents put her in the class because her sister was in it, and they didn't want to wait around for two different lesson times - she hadn't gone through any of the lower levels. They couldn't send her back down to another level, so all the kids that were actually in the appropriate class spent half the time waiting at the edge of the pool waiting for this kid, and for the instructor to help her.

[Brendone]

Originally Posted by sleepingmoose

Back then you actually could 'fail'. Nowadays, no one is checking to see if you actually have the prerequisite for lessons.

So “attaboy” participation awards instead of actually learning and possibly failing until you do learn. Such a BS system. It’s ok for kids to learn failure and success. Some day a parent will sue after their kid drowns. “You said they could swim, so we let them play at the beach while we went for lunch.” No, they couldn’t swim, we didn’t want to hurt their feelings.

[TrentCrimmIndependent]

I failed at least one swimming level. Think I made it to maroon.

If we're passing children regardless of their aptitude just to save their feelings then we're in big trouble. I'd mostly feel bad for the lifeguards who will have to save these kids that believe they're competent swimmers when they could've just bobbed around during lessons.

[Wormius]

Sorry. How dumb of a parent would you need to be to leave your kids alone at the beach, only relying on a report card from a swim instructor, if they could swim or not? How as a parent would you actually not know this? This is basic parenting. Do you just drop your kids off at lessons and stare at your phone and not see if your kid how your kid is doing?

YMCA won’t even let kids swim in the pools without proving a basic swim test first.

[undercoverbrother]

####ing client

"Hey UCB, can you do XYZ for us?"

"Errrm, I guess, but it's not really the type of work we do. Are you guys able to give us some support to ensure success for your clients"

"......................errrr.................. "

####

[flamesfever]

Originally Posted by Brendone

So “attaboy” participation awards instead of actually learning and possibly failing until you do learn. Such a BS system. It’s ok for kids to learn failure and success. Some day a parent will sue after their kid drowns. “You said they could swim, so we let them play at the beach while we went for lunch.” No, they couldn’t swim, we didn’t want to hurt their feelings.

I'm afraid this type of thing has become part of our culture. No one is allowed to fail, and everyone must get a prize, if only for "citizenship". Things like discipline and respect for authority, along with healthy competition, have been gradually wiped out of the system. I understand in Ontario at some of the young kids hockey games, they aren't even allowed to post the score.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Ashartus

I remember passing red, then moving up to maroon, the instructor sending me back down to red and failing red. The next year I just skipped up to blue and passed.

I kept failing maroon as well. I think I failed 3 or 4 times. I quit when they changed to the number system.

My issue was always that my knees weren't close enough and/or parallel on the kicks when doing the breast stroke. I did well on everything else except for that damn breast stroke kick.

I seem to recall the instructors kept saying they weren't sure how I was still gliding reasonably well when my knee positions were all wonky when I did the kick for breast stroke. I never figured out what I did wrong. I didn't like breast stroke anyways, but apparently it's the best option for endurance/survival in open water situations? Since I was faster than most other kids in the class due to repeating, the instructors tested the higher level swimming types on me. They tried dolphin kicks, butterfly and side stroke while we waited for the other kids + when they got tired of me not doing well with breast stroke. They told me I'd pass those without issue at the next level, but breast stroke I wasn't passable.

Years later, I told someone who was a lifeguard/swimming lessons instructor during the numbers system. He said after the first few years of the number system, as long as you could do extra laps, even if how you were swimming looked wonky, you'd pass. He said they made notes if your positioning looked weird, but they were only failing people for that type of thing if you took the lifeguard classes.

Made sense to me.

So I asked him to look at what was wrong with my kick and he was speechless and refused to comment on it. I still don't know what's wrong with my breast stroke kick.


Swimming is an amazing cardio though. A few years ago, I decided to do it more as a good recovery activity between sports and working out. You watch these old guys slowly go back and forth on the lanes and you think, "Pfft. I can outdo that." I could, but 2-4 lanes later vs 1 for the old guy, I'm dying and panting and out of breath and the dude slowly turns around for his 10th lane or whatever insane marathon practice swim he had decided on.

[Brendone]

We live in a zero accountability world where people sue McDonalds for making them fat.

I had a neighbour who’s kid got hit by a car because parents told them playing in the backyard (lake facing) was too dangerous. Driveway / street had a “Slow, kids playing” sign watching them so that was safe. Kid gets out of the hospital with a broken arm and is back out in the street the next day, no parents around. I’m guessing they would consider a public beach safe, since others could watch their kid, but the back yard lake was not supervised by others.

So yeah, I can see parents dumping their “trained” swimmers on a public beach and heading out for margaritas

[FlamesAddiction]

I went all the way through the old program and got all the badges. I even got my life guard tickets afterwards. It was pretty much the only sport I was good at growing up. My recollection is foggy, but I think I did fail maroon my first time. I seem to recall that level being the real hump that separated people.

Some programs still hold people back. My kid is in swimming lessons and you have to get everything checked off before they let you go on to the next level. She had everything but one thing checked off and had to enter again at the same level. It didn't seem to bother her or any of the other kids in the same situation.

Taekwondo is really bad for that from my experience. I knew so many kids that got high level belts and were absolutely terrible. It was likel you paid to be there, so you get a belt.