As a child my parents enrolled me in swimming lessons. A natural swimmer I was not—the chlorine stung my eyes and my asthma made it difficult to hold my breath for long periods of time. Somehow the timing of my swimming lessons happened to coincide with a cold or flu of sorts; I failed each level numerous times.

By the time I was around 11 or 12 years old, I was head and shoulders above the other students in the class, and the weakest swimmer to boot. It was humiliating. Needless to say, I convinced my parents to let me quit swimming lessons even though my swimming skills were fair at best. I could do a mean back float, tread water for about 10 seconds and swim about 2 meters.